A – Sorry for the delay. No excuses. I just lost my motivation. All my mojo went poof. Something happened and I went insane for a little bit and my other personality who doesn't like Vampire diaries took over. She doesn't like TVD. She hates Bonnie. She hates reading and writing. Hates music. Really she's a horrible person. Just horrible.

B – Okay, so basically, to fuck with the TV show. I'm just going free-balls commando here. Read it at your own will/risk. Completely AU.

C – Silas is a completely different Silas who is not Stefan's doppelganger. He's not. The Silas I have in mind is a red headed version of Sydney from Vagrant Story.

NOT Stefan.

D – you're more like than not going to have to reread the previous chapters.

For Those with the Benefit of Flash Photography Comes He, Silas.

Salt.

Silas spat the mouthful of half chewed potato into a napkin. The fries needed salt.

Lovely.

Perfection itself.

He reached for the saltshaker… And found it empty. Empty…

How utterly fucking wonderful.

And the waitress had just passed him as straight as a speeding bus on the highway at midnight. A speeding bus on the highway at midnight carrying a gang of escaped convicts to Mexico.

Six thousand and two years on the face of the earth to be ignored by a waitress in a rat-trap diner.

Six millennia and two years. Meaning sixty centuries… and two years. He'd come up from the very bowels of Egypt, up through the catacombs of Rome, waddled through every Turkish canal in existence, done the Lawrence of Arabia across five deserts... Ate dog in China, cat it Korea and frog in Japan. Old World to Far World and now, inevitably again, the New World.

To a diner with empty saltshakers.

He'd killed fifteen thousand vampires in his lifetime.

Ten thousand werewolves.

Eight thousand, seven hundred and twenty-four priests.

A thousand, six hundred and seventy priestesses.

Eight hundred witches.

Five hundred and thirty-six ghosts.

Two hundred queens.

One hundred and sixty-two kings.

One hundred and eleven princes.

Three hundred and twenty policemen.

Two hundred and ninety-seven policewomen.

Fifty-seven lawyers.

Forty-six journalists.

Thirty-two indie-folk singer-songwriters.

Twenty-seven actors.

Fifteen Jehovah's Witnesses.

Twelve Latter Days Saints or whatever they called themselves.

Six Prime Ministers.

Three Presidents.

…And two postmen.

Never killed a diner waitress as far as he could recall, and his recollection was fucking stellar as it stood, but with each new day, an opportunity presents itself. Wasn't that what the humans always said?

Ironic, that a species with so little to expect would have so much hope for the future. There lives, meaningless at the get-go… A quarter of it wasted in education. Another quarter in taxable employment. The third quarter, in a sort of preparatory degeneration, priming them for the big black light of nothing and maggots six foot under. Self-delusion at its best.

If he left them alone, they'd all return to the mud and the worms and rot from whence they'd sprung up, but this little waitress who'd had the audacity to ignore him, he, Silas… He'd spare her the osteoporosis, liver failure and coronary artery bypass. Do her a favour, so to speak, and end her fucking ratty life. No insult to rats intended.

That he, Silas, the fucking Silas, the end all and be all of the world–

That he should be subjected to unsalted fries… And worse, even if he were inclined to salt his own fries, (and let the record show that he wasn't), no salt?

Was he to ask for it? All Oliver Twisted, Please sir, can I have some salt?

He, Silas?

"You gonna kill her?" Asha mumbled in the booth across from him, teeth chomping away at a good slab of burger meat. With cheese. Bacon. Grilled filet chicken and meatballs on the side.

Honestly, he wasn't even hungry. There was still the issue of the snakes in his gastrointestinal system. Like having worms. If worms were four to five feet long, ten centimetres across, and had fangs…

Enough to put anybody in a bad mood they were, so it wasn't his fault completely when he snapped at her, "What? You like her? You wanna marry her? Wait tables with her? Fingerfuck each other in the kitchen when the supervisor goes out for a smoke?"

"No."

"Then mind your fucking business and eat your fucking food."

So yeah, he was in a bad mood.

Maybe.

On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 meant rainbows and butterflies and 10 meant being eviscerated in a chainsaw massacre by Leatherface with Freddy and Jason taking turns raping his face while he screamed futilely in an empty, used-to-be-a-plantation field… His bad mood was around 7. 8, maybe.

Three trains, five planes and two taxi-cabs would put even the best of men in a bad mood. And no one had ever called him the best of men. Not in six millennia and two years. Not even once. Not even in a joke.

Because that wouldn't even be funny.

And his head hurt. Bad. Badly? As if someone was drilling galvanize nails into his temples.

First off - America. He felt like one of those Fae in those paranormal romances, stifling on the amount of iron in the air. Worse, he wasn't even in the good half of America. He was in the half that should have been thrown out of the union.

Culture, they called it. Heritage.

Disease more like. Dressed up in pitchers of lemonade and porches with creaky floorboards. A rooster or two in the yard and a stray dog somewhere with fleas behind its ears. He could smell the supremacy, the hypocrisy. Fuck, he could hear the fucking mosquitoes already. See the octogenarians on their porch turning their nose up.

Sleepy, innocuous, disease. As insidious as stomach cancer.

And John Mayer.

Jesus Christ! Thirteen hours nonstop, either John Mayer or Johnny Cash. Cash, he didn't mind all so much. He was a pessimistic gloomy fella and Silas figured they'd have had a lot to talk about. But the Mayer! Stick a dick up his ass much? How many songs could a single man sing? And why was he being treated to them all back to fucking back? Was it the man's birthday? Was it John Mayer Day in this part of Virginia? Was he a son of Virginia, born and bred? If he asked them to change the station would he find himself on the wrong side of a notorious, murderous Mayer clan?

Half of my heart is s shotgun wedding to a bride with a paper ring.

And half of my heart is part of a man who's never truly loved anything.

Ugh. Like a parasitic killer worm invading the bowels of the world. Always croaking on about war and peace and love like some Kool-Aid drinking Prince of Vagrants.

Half of his fucking heart?

Who the fuck cared about John Mayer and his fucking heart. Who in the fucking hell gave two shits about John Mayer and his fucking heart?

"Enough," he grumbled, and the stereo gave out with a burst of blue sparks. There was a gush of static for a moment or two and then silence. A couple heads raised and looked about. Slowly and dully. Old, tired buffalo getting a whiff of lion on the wind. Too old, too tired to care much. As long as they still had grass to chew on and chew on and chew on...

Old buffalo.

Dangerous buffalo.

He poured some of the Mountain Dew into a glass and stirred in a couple of teaspoons of sugar.

Fucking, dirty buffalo.

Ruthless buffalo who knew how to tie a rope into a noose.

Six times he'd been lynched in America.

Four times for general blackness and twice for suspicion of witchcraft. Those last two times he'd tried to argue that he was just black. Only black. Just lynch me, dammit. But coming down to the end, literate blackness and being a witch were nigh one in the same, so they lynched him, then lit his ass on fire for good measure.

And the one time he was back in America getting his witchy swag on, he just so happened to come out one shade darker than albino white in the most PC era of Americanism to date. Double safe. The lowly niggers had rights these days. The fucking homosexuals. The handicaps. The retards… You had to leave them alone now.

America, all tolerant. The most open minded place in the world since Sodom and Gomorrah. Land of all races, religions and creeds as long as you were willing to add a hyphen to your category.

Proper.

Correct.

There was a proper name for him now. Now… he'd be what, a wiccan? Some shit like that.

In a sad way, he missed the lynching and the fires and all that ado.

It always used to fill him with a certain sort of pride.

Being burnt, watching yourself drift away to ashes and knowing that he, Silas, would persist? Nothing in the world as stimulating as dying, and knowing that you're better than the person killing you. It had always filled him with a bizarre joy. A perverse jubilation. That he would piss on their graves when they died… And the graves of their children. And their children's children.

Through desert. Through ocean. Through mountain. Through storm. Through men and gods and dynasties… He had survived. He took another heaping spoon of sugar and added it to the drink. watching the crystals sink to the bottom. Stir, stir, stir.

He had conquered. And even in times of defeat, he had persevered. Eight fucking years old he'd been when they buried him the first time. Eight fucking years old when they'd cut his eyes out with a hot round spoon. Cut off his toes off and made a necklace of them. They'd nailed him down in his coffin. Big long nails. His fingers they'd smashed with a hammer, phalanx by fucking phalanx. Crushed his metacarpals with a sledgehammer and nailed his broken wrists together.

Art, they'd said.

Laughed.

He remembered their saliva, their urine, their cum, big nasty globs of it hitting his face. And the laughter as they stuck a baton up his ass, to keep him nice and ready for what he had coming in the underworld. Cut his balls off and stuffed them down his throat…

But he'd never reached the underworld. He'd just stayed there. In the box. Waiting for somebody to dig him back up again.

Waiting to have a bath. Maybe some eggs and a piece of bread.

How many years exactly had he spent, thinking about nothing more than what he'd eat when he got out. Bread. Eggs… Manflesh…

And now, he couldn't get some fucking table salt for his fries?

He shook the salt shaker again, holding it up to the sunlight to inspect it better. Because there just had to be salt in the saltshaker, right? They wouldn't try to fuck him up the ass again, right? Not over something as trivial as French Fries. So why were they insisting that he bend over?

Silas impaled two ketchup-drowned fries on his spork, already disgusted.

"Waitress?"

"Hmm?" the girl on mop duty spared him a glance. Only the most cursory glance. Busy working on the slushy aftermath of a six year old shit who'd thought it was funny to waste food in a good ol' fashioned food fight.

"Ma'am, can we have some salt, here? Please. Shaker's empty."

"Mmm," she peered up at him. Blond curls and electric pink streaks bouncing delightfully on her flat but adorably freckled chest. The blue eyes didn't hurt, neither. Lips… Watermelon pink, if he had to guess. Nails cut short. Shirt, clean and ironed by her mama most likely. A cheap pretty hand-me-down brooch on her collar and a clip in her hair reminiscent of a decrepit or deceased grammie. Virginia was notorious for gramses, and gam-gams. Two splotches on her apron, one ketchup, the other coffee and old Sketchers on her feet with mismatched socks. One white, and one a faded pink that most people wouldn't notice wasn't white.

A nametag reading Bonnie-May Henderson.

Appropriate, seeing as he'd come to this outhouse of the world to kill one Bonnie Bennett.

Practise, then.

She put the mop down. Wiped her hands on her apron and came over to the table. Slid into the booth right next to Asha, and looked him square in the eyes. "And you're too much of a fucking hotshot to walk over to the counter and get your own salt?"

The fuck? Silas smiled. "I might look like something from your dollhouse, child, but you don't want to play with me." He imagined flaying her. Or having Asha flay her.

"In my experience Big Bads who feel the need to announce to all and sundry they happen across just how big and how bad they are, usually turn out to be just hot air and sulphur."

"Who says I'm a Big Bad? I just want some salt." For some reason, he kept smiling. Happy. Just a little bit. He'd have Asha do the killing, but he'd watch. And let his hands play in her hot blood.

"Oh, you don't know? I'm psychic."

"Are you now?" His red eyes settled on the girl blue ones. Not a trace of fear. Not even that little stranger danger fear that someone her age usually had ingrained in them. A vapid little bunny-wunny...

A regular little hellraiser.

A doll.

"Want me to read your fortune?" She stretched her hand out for his, palm up beseeching...

And somewhere in his brainstem, somewhere in his spine, he knew it was a bad idea, but he'd never had a reason to distrust waitresses with pink streaks in their hair and mismatched socks.

What could be the very worst that could happen?

One of his eyebrows went up, just the way he'd been practising getting one eyebrow up. "Read my future, will you?" He put his hand flat on the table. "It might take a while."

"Hmm," she purred, tracing her fingers up and down the creases of his hand. Tickled a bit, to tell the truth. "I see… your death."

Interesting. "When?"

"Now."

The red light of a digital clock was telling him it was three o'clock in the morning. Which was impossible because the last he knew he was in Virginia, in a roadside diner, with unsalted fries.

He was in hospital bed.

Also, he was naked.

Also he was handcuffed to the hospital bed. With a monitor capped on to his finger, ECG leads stuck on to his chest, and an IV plugged in to dick. A huge, giant, gigantic fucking needle, plugged in to a vein on his dick.

The hell?

The fucking hell?

It was hard to see with the fluorescent lights so bright. And the room was beyond sweltering. Beads of sweat dangled from his eyelashes, threateningly.

"Hello?" he called. Pathetically. Had he, Silas, been kidnapped? For what, his kidneys? How does a six thousand year old warlock get kidnapped? From a diner? In broad daylight? Especially with an expression-wielding witch bodyguard in tow?

Did Asha betray him?

Could she?

The thought couldn't have crossed her mind without him knowing about it first… And she had nothing to betray him for. He was her saviour. Her dark messiah that had risen from the waters and saved her life. The first and only man to gift her with multiple orgasms so hard she actually blacked out. The dude who had bought her her first android.

She wouldn't betray him. Not to some BDSM Kidney Thief, anyway…

The clock never changed from its 3:00 AM display, but he must have counted out at least ten hours before she came through the door. A pair of garden shears in hand. Catholic school uniform complete with glasses, pigtails, and a skirt so impossibly short he could see her ass every time the shit fan made an oscillation.

With a big fucking smile on her face. She came right up to him, hovered over his bed letting her eyes feast on his body. "You're surprisingly happy to see me…"

Silas chuckled. "Don't flatter yourself, this is just my reaction to handcuffs." A lie, kinda. It had only taken a couple of seconds for him to figure out that the pink-haired freckle-faced Bonnie-May Henderson had been some sort of trap set up by the recently malevolent Bonnie Bennett, and since then he'd really not had a single thought besides fucking her.

Sure he was pissed off. Sure he didn't like people trapping him in illusions. Sure, he was going to kill her before the end of the day. But he'd missed that feel of her around him. He'd missed that feel of her fingers in his hair – or Shane's hair – clawing through his scalp. He'd missed the taste of her sweat. The heady charge of electricity that would go through his nervous system for those precious seconds when she climaxed. Missed the way she'd bite his lip. His ear. His tongue. Missed the feel of her teeth on his balls. God, so many things he'd missed…

She pulled up a chair near to his bed. Sat down with the shears on her lap. Like a proper little lady. Taking up habits from the jackass Klaus, most likely. "This body doesn't really work for me," she said with a lazy frown. "Too pretty. Too fragile."

"Well, Klaus didn't really leave me much opportunity for shopping. I just put this old thing on…"

"How do you shift in and out of bodies?"

"Well, first thing, you have to die. That's the tricky part."

"What's tricky about it? Klaus ripped your head off as though… you were just a weak pathetic human."

"And that's a tricky thing to let someone do to you," Silas sighed. "To let someone rip your head off? That's complicated shit. You wanna practise, I can show you how, if you don't have anything else to do."

"I've a thousand things better to do than hang out with some decrepit, has-been hypnotist."

"And yet–"

"I feel sorry for you."

Did she now? Bitch. "Mm," he muttered. And then purred for no good reason. He wanted to rub himself against her leg. "We had some fun times, Bonnie. Just because I've decided to replace and kill you, you shouldn't take it personal. It's not you. It's just this thing with Klaus. He's going to try to use you to get to me, and right now, I can't be bothered to play cat and mouse with some fucking fly-by-night hybrid. Nothing personal."

Bonnie nodded. "I know. That's why I wanted to clear the air. Just because you're trying to kill me, and just because I'm going to kill you doesn't mean we can't be friends. You've got a special place in my heart you know." She put one hand over her heart, and sent the other up under her skirt to cup herself. "Here and here. You've invaded and conquered me through and through."

He nodded his head as best he could from his handcuffed, spread-eagled position. "I did what I could to be of assistance."

"And I'm much obliged. I've been… awakened and when I look back on all those years I spent sleeping on two feet, I just want to say thanks."

"Again. It was my pleasure."

"That's why I want to return the favour."

"Hmm?" Would it be too much if he purred? He rally wanted to. But fucking self respect wouldn't let him. The handcuffs were biting into his flesh just a little too tightly. Emotions were firing off left and right and all he wanted to do was feel her.

She reached over to his bedside table, found a remote and switched the TV to life. Some show was on, a bunch of men sitting around a diner table arguing about something or the other.

"No volume…" she murmured to herself. "Anyway, I know the lines. Have you ever seen Reservoir Dogs?"

"Tarantino's breakout hit? No." The comedy-crime genre wasn't for him. He liked his movies light. Or dark. Finding Nemo or Exorcist. Everything inbetween was more or less redundant. "Never got the chance."

"Pity. It's a classic."

"So I've heard." Rogue strands of hair had come loose from her pigtails, laying slicked down to her skin in the most unnatural, arousing way possible. What more did she want from him? Obviously she'd set this whole kiss kiss bang bang up so they could hammer out some baser needs… Why couldn't she just get on with it? For fuck's sake, he could see her wetting herself for him. He could see the glistening sheen on her thighs. Smell it. Almost taste it.

Just jump on it already.

She could only expect him to lie there like some virgin in a slaughterhouse for so long–

"Do you want me to tell it to you?"

And that's really bad English… It's a good thing he wasn't planning to let her live long enough to get into college. Those essays alone would have been a nightmare to behold. And speaking of nightmares, this mental sexcapade was taking a downturn. "Tell me what, baby doll?"

"The movie."

"You mean, narrate the movie?"

She nodded.

"I guess. If you want. If that's how you want to use this time."

She smiled. "It starts with Mr Brown going 'Let me tell you what 'Like a Virgin' is about. It's all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The entire song. It's a metaphor for big dicks.'"

"What?" Silas jiggled his cuffs, testing them for the first time. The last thing he wanted to hear was an excerpt from a dialogue about dicks. Not the sexiest pillow talk in the world. If she was waxing on about his dick, well that would've been a completely different issue.

God, he'd missed her! Pretty full lips. His babydoll girl with the body of a playboy bunny. He remembered everything. How it felts. Her fingers in his skin, clawing at his neck in frantic desperation. His teeth on her breast when he released himself inside her…

Silas calmed himself.

He was going to kill her. But first, he'd get that one last fuck in which is what he'd wanted.

He was getting the chance for a farewell.

One last chance to sink himself inside her cunt.

As soon as she was done with whatever Tourette's Syndrome nonsense she was on about.

"So," she leaned back in the chair getting comfortable. "The movie starts with a bunch of guys – Mr Brown, Mr Blonde, Mr Orange, Mr Blue, Mr Pink, Mr White, Joe and Nice Guy Eddie – in a restaurant. Joe's the boss and Nice Guy Eddie is his son. Mr Brown's talking about the meaning of 'Like a Virgin.'"

Silas nodded. "Madonna. Virgin. Dicks. There, I'm all caught up. Now, how's about–"

"Mr Blonde is arguing against what Mr Brown is saying, 'No, no. It's about a girl who is very vulnerable. She's been fucked over a few times. Then she meets some guy who's really sensitive...'

"Mr Brown cuts him off. 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa... Time out Greenbay. Tell that fucking bullshit to the tourists.'

"Mr Brown, again, wants to make his point, ''Like a Virgin' is not about this sensitive girl who meets a nice fella. That's what "True Blue" is about, now, granted, no argument about that.'

"Mr Orange, a young Tim Roth, says 'Which one is 'True Blue'?'

"Nice Guy Eddie speaks for the first time – ''True Blue' was a big ass hit for Madonna. I don't even follow this Tops In Pops shit, and I've at least heard of "True Blue".'

"Mr Orange – 'Look, asshole, I didn't say I ain't heard of it. All I asked was how does it go? Excuse me for not being the world's biggest Madonna fan.'

"Mr Blonde, Michael Madsen, adds in, 'Personally, I can do without her.'

"Mr Blue, you don't really see him for the rest of the movie besides the beginning, "I like her early stuff. You know, 'Lucky Star', 'Borderline' - but once she got into her 'Papa Don't Preach' phase, I don't know, I tuned out.'

"Mr Brown starts complaining- 'Hey, you guys are making me lose my... train of thought here. I was saying something, what was it? What the fuck was I talking about?'

"Mr Pink answers 'You said 'True Blue' was about a nice girl, a sensitive girl who meets a nice guy, and that 'Like a Virgin' was a metaphor for big dicks.'"

"Wait," Bonnie put a hand on his chest, one feverish hand and he could feel her fingers all the way down in his prostate. "I forgot to tell you that Mr Brown is Tarantino himself making his trademark cameo appearance, and Mr Pink is the same guy who does Nucky on Boardwalk Empire. You watch Boardwalk Empire?"

Silas nodded. He didn't, but lest he get a running play by play of the pilot, he nodded.

"Right," Bonnie smiled, "So Mr Brown goes on to the guys, "'Lemme tell you what 'Like a Virgin' is about. It's all about this cooze who's a regular fuck machine, I'm talking morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.'

"Mr. Blue asks 'How many dicks is that?'

"Mr. White chirps in, 'A lot.'

"Mr. Brown – 'Then one day she meets this John Holmes motherfucker and it's like, whoa baby, I mean this cat is like Charles Bronson in the Great Escape, he's digging tunnels. Now, she's gettin' this serious dick action and she's feeling something she ain't felt since forever. Pain. Pain.' Mr. Brown finishes the explanation - 'It hurts her. It shouldn't hurt her, you know, her pussy should be Bubble Gum by now, but when this cat fucks her, it hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time. You see the pain is reminding a fuck machine what it once was like to be a virgin. Hence, 'Like a Virgin'."

Silas swallowed.

"Virgin fuck machine," she repeated, a little wistfully. "That's what you called me once. Your virgin fuck machine. You remember that?"

Honestly, he didn't. He'd thought it, but he hadn't told her. Had she been creeping through forbidden places? Off limit places?

"That's supposed to be an oxymoron or something?" she asked.

How to answer that?

She went on. "Because I've been thinking about fucking Klaus. I really want to do it. Either him or Kol. Or both, but I haven't really tried and I think I figured out why."

"Because I've ruined you for other men?"

"Yes."

Okay…

"You've turned me into this fuck machine who gets wet at the sight of cucumbers and carrots. It's all I think about morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick. My pussy has become bubblegum. I'm like the girl in the song. You see?"

He didn't. Not quite. But he was starting to guess at what she was planning to do with the shears…

"And," she continued. "That's the problem for you as well. You've made a fuck machine out of me… but only because somebody made a fuck machine out of you. It's all we ever think about. Morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.'

"I'm not following you."

"It's not complicated. For both of us to move on, me with Klaus and his brother, and you with that busty, crab trap you picked up. For us to really feel it, we're going to have to remember that pain. I've figured it out. We have to virginate ourselves. Get ourselves back to that state where it hurts."

"Are you deliberately trying to sound crazy right now, Baby Doll, or have you really gone batshit crazy?"

"No. Trust me." Her right hand took hold of his cock. Firm grip, as ever. "You're going to thank me for this. I'm going to make you feel like a virgin. A girl virgin. Fucked for the very first time."

And quick as a lightning. Faster even, she had the shears right under his head, and off it went.

The pain didn't register for a good couple of seconds. Only after his brain had processed that yes, Bonnie fucking Bennett had cut the head of his cock off with a garden shears. And yes, that was his blood shooting out of him, painting the ceiling in lines of red. And yes, her finger-claws were inside his ballsack. And yes, he was still fucking hard as hell. Only then, did the pain sink in.

Scream?

Give her the satisfaction?

He'd have to give her bonus points for perfecting her mind games. If he hadn't been 100% sure that this was all in his head, he'd be freaking himself out of his shit, instead of getting off on it.

If he opened his mouth, he'd say something that he'd regret later. Or he'd make some guttural sex noise and give her the win. Instead he just watched…

Watched her climb up on the bed, settle herself between his legs. "Where I come from, they call it giving a guy head, but we're going to have to coin a new phrase for this, aren't we?"

He managed a smile.

"I'm gonna," she raked her tongue slowly down the underside of his cock, "Help you remember what it felt like," A flash of teeth, "When that big old meanie made a bitch out of you."

"Bonnie…"

"You do a lot of complaining about it, but that was the highlight of your life, wasn't it? Your sex life at least." She took the whole thing in her mouth, went all the way till he hit her throat and then slid back off. "Somebody stronger than you. More powerful than you. Making you helpless." Her fingers trailed bloody tracks down his thighs. "Somebody tearing your insides apart. Breaking every fucking barrier. You're crying from the pain and coming from the pleasure at the same time." She kissed his bloody, hypersensitized stump of a dick. A quick peck of lips. Then she straddled herself on him, quickly, professionally... Held him in place as she sank down on him.

That was when the tears came.

For a long protracted stretch of silence, save for his gasping and that breathy sound she was making… all he could feel was pain.

"Don't move…" he managed to get out. If she moved he'd break in two. He'd explode and implode at the same time. The universe would cave in on itself and his mind would melt and seep out through his ears like a runny egg yolk. His back ached in painful excruciating tightness. "Don't move."

And true to form, because she was a bitch made flesh, she moved. Pogo-sticking herself on his bloody shaft like if she was some five year old at a carnival.

"Does it hurt?" she asked in a rushed, throaty hum. "Does it feel good?"

He nodded, answering one question or the other. Maybe both.

Then she slowed. Expertly halting and easing down on him in a slow mountainous grind. She leant down close to his chest. Licked his throat. From the hollow right up to the apple. She sucked on the apple, washing it with her tongue... "By the time you work through the pain enough to come, you know you're going to bleed to death, right?"

He nodded.

She slapped him. Hard across the face. "Feel that?"

He nodded.

"How's it feel?"

He nodded.

"To die for, am I right?"

And for some inane reason, he nodded.

"Wonder what she's dreaming about?" Kol asked, sipping his cup of Folgers. "You mind if I take a peek?"

Klaus turned a page in the Book, not bothering a glance at the unconscious creature with him in his bed or his brother. "Why would I mind?"

"It looks private."

"And?"

"Private, like a sex dream."

Klaus turned another page. "She's not dreaming about me, so feel free."

"How do you know it's not about you?" Kol smirked. "The way she follows you around, and how she plays the Heidi card on you. And you have baths together… And all that fun stuff… Not that I pay attention to what you two do, but how do you know she's not dreaming about you?"

"Primarily because if she was dreaming about me, I'd be in the fucking dream, not hear listening to you." Klaus turned another page. Even with his super speed reading, and his linguistic ability and his overall genius, it'd still take him a good couple of hours to get through the entire thing.

It had taken an entire day for him to figure out how to open the Book without it setting his new house, Mayor Lockwood's old house, on fire.

Nothing too fancy, just your ritual blood-letting and run of the mill prayer-chanting.

Kol sat down at the bottom of the bed, on Bonnie's side. Used his free hand to play with her toes.

"Are you really going to kill her when all's said and done?"

"Or before…" he groaned and went back a couple of pages. He'd mistranslated something and now everything was misaligned. "I might have underestimated this bloke."

"Silas."

"Yes. He, Silas. He's a bit of a walking plague, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rolled into one kinda guy."

"I'd assumed as much when I arrived. The rotting bodies in the street, and all that."

"That was Bonnie."

"That was Bonnie under his control."

"Never matter. Point is, they are both of them, more powerful than either of us. Both of us. And I don't like things existing that are stronger than me." Which wasn't a new rule he'd just made up. That had been one of his oldest policies. The driving principal behind murdering his parents. "Their only weakness is each other. Combined, they'd have the synergistic power to wipe us off the face of the earth."

Kol frowned. "So which do we kill first? Silas, right? Offing Bonnie just seems a waste."

Klaus levelled his brother with a smile. "Waste not, want not. Isn't that what mother used to say?"

"Mother never said anything of the sort. She was a woman of extremes, if you remember."

"Somebody used to say it."

"People say it, I just can't tell you who in particu– Elijah, used to say that."

The poor bastard. Klaus closed the book, his concentration finally broken. His eyes drifted over Kol's fingers on Bonnie's toes.

He had more important things to worry about.

What did it matter who touched her toes? Shane had most likely touched her toes. Lawn Boy, perhaps. Either of the Salvatore brothers. That child her mother had chosen to raise instead of her. Hell, her father had probably touched her toes when she was small, the way human parents play with their children's toes when they were small. Abby might have played with her daughter's toes from time to time. And who else… Rebekah's Loser Boy Mathias or whatever his name was… And who else…

Much more important things to think about than who had or hadn't touched Bonnie's toes.

Why should he possibly care about her feet and who touched them?

"If I was smart, I'd go with plan A and kill her while I still have the chance, but I'm going to gamble a little bit and say let's go with plan B."

Kol smirked his nastiest, most mischievous smirk. "The further down the alphabet the better they get. Why not skip down a bit further until we come to do good stuff."

Inspired by the blue eyed crazy guy in Justified who says that he'll eat his plate of shit, unsalted. And by Reservoir Dogs, of course. And above all, by the wonderful reviewers who make it impossible for me to give up on this despite the fact that I have given up on TVD.

Also, I formerly declare that from this moment on, I will be also accepting reviews in the form of tweets at tenlegdragon, because I'm that desperate for feedback. Seriously, feed me back, please. Even if you just want to say fuck off for taking so long to update. I need the connection.

Shout-out to all reviewers so far: IIIIIIIIIIIIEEIIIIIIIIIII will always love YOUUUUUUUUUU. And I'm very truly deeply sorry for going on hiatus. Didn't mean to. The way they treat Bonnie, and Klaus going over to the Originals. It was all too much. Pregnant werewolf Hayley. If Klaus was going to spawn a child the very least he could have done was spawn one with Bonnie. Somebody needs to do a badass klonnie pregnancy fic.

And a recommendation for maybe the best fanfics I've ever read on any site at any point in time in my life in any fandom, or the ones I've enjoyed the most in the history of ever, (neither one of them TVD related so don't nobody feel offended).

A Sweet Craving by yellowspotlight89 - a Django Unchained Spinoff with an OC that I straight up love!

Six Underground by dietplainlite - a Sherlock (UK series) prequel. I trust that after ST-ID you guys are fully aware of the smouldering awesomeness of Cumberbatch, so her story rocks by default because it's about Sherlock who generally rocks, and she gets the portrayal just insanely right. It's awesome, and there's a plot somewhere in it to boot.