Dear Readers: If you read the Heresy series, you'll probably recognize the first portion of this one shot. I just wanted to explore the moment between Bonnie and Stefan a little further. Enjoy?

SONGS

Phantogram - You Don't Get Me High Anymore (How To Dress Well and ATTLAS remixes)

Son Lux - Let Me Follow

STARE WITH ME INTO THE ABYSS

What she couldn't have anticipated was realizing, or frenzying at the realization, that she missed the needy sensation of fangs in her flesh. Stefan's Porsche pulled up to the curb at her grandmother's house and before she could step out of the car, before she could let this chance go, before her moment alone with a reasonable and understanding vampire was over, she had to ask.

"Stefan," she breathed, her hand twitching in its tight grasp on the door handle. She counted in her mind before she could look at him and say it. "Will you bite me?"

And once the question was spoken aloud she came to understand that the pain she so craved was heavily associated with her memories of Kai, and what it was like to be around Kai, and what it was like to be sensual with Kai. In all the time she knew him, he brought pain. And she knew so damn well that she was unhealthy to ask for pain because, even so temporarily, it left her with the intimation that she hadn't lost him completely. She knew. But she asked for it anyway.

Stefan looked startled.

"I…what?"

Bonnie shook her head and wished she'd never asked. "Nevermind," she said, too nicely, and opened the door.

"No," Stefan said, reaching over and pulling the door closed again. He hesitated to speak again, his concerned amber eyes gleaming at her. "…Why?"

Bonnie looked down into the darkness at her feet.

"I don't miss it," she said truthfully. "I just miss him. I fed him. I fed him for a long time, you know? And I hated it, but after a while you just get used to things. After a while…it made me feel like I was doing the right thing."

"How sentimental, but do you realize who you just asked?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm sorry, Stefan. I shouldn't've."

"No, you shouldn't've."

Bonnie bit the insides of her cheeks and wouldn't look at him. His hand was still on her door handle, preventing her from leaving the car. Otherwise she knew she'd already be gone. She could feel Stefan's soft glare, but she didn't know what else to say or do, except wait to be permitted to leave.

It hardly occurred to her to feel afraid, until a rush of impatience drove her to glance at him. He was staring at her, still so astounded but with a noticeable tint of temptation. She didn't think of it before she'd asked, but if he chose to oblige her there was a chance she wasn't getting out of his car with her head attached to her body. Even dead, she was sure she couldn't handle being the one responsible for pushing Stefan over the edge again.

"Stefan," she said quietly, hoping that her voice would ground him if he needed grounding. "I'm going inside now. Could you…" she tipped her head in the direction of his hand, still on the door handle.

Stefan blinked. She felt his self-control settling in the way he sighed, and leaned. But his hand stayed, blocking her exit. And as he leaned, he crossed a shadow where the light from the street lamps couldn't reach inside the car, she saw his silhouette descending and she shrank back into the leather of the passenger seat, until she could shrink no further and in the darkness she felt his lips against the softest part of her neck.

She knew better than to struggle. At this point the smartest thing she could do was sit still and wait, to see if this would pass, to see if she survived it.

His mouth opened and a small pinch of her flesh wasn't hers anymore. Her skin was in his mouth, held hostage between his flattest teeth, teased by two taunting tips poised to puncture where his tongue, instead, and so tentatively, touched down. She could feel her heart for how hard it pumped, positive he was entranced by it, and she tried, she tried to pace her breath in such a way that would slow the beating, that would leave room for him to think. She bit her lip and looked up to the roof of the car, opening her neck, relaxing into him and hoping compliance would win his mercy.

She waited for the bite.

He only kissed, from one artery to the other, closing and reopening his lips across her trachea, growing less concerned with this first crossing of boundaries—her best friend's ex, his ex's best friend—as the hesitant tongue trailing over her drumming skin started to swirl in hunger of another kind.

Bonnie squirmed in her seat. He was more in control than she thought. It wouldn't last if he chose to actually bite her, but she grew certain as things progressed that he was smarter than that. She wasn't getting what she asked for, because the hot tension collecting between her thighs wasn't it, but that was alright. She didn't know that his lips on her neck would feel quite as good as they did. Or that she would start to wonder what it might feel like to invite him in—to her house and her body—and what he might feel like. How like or unlike Kai he might fuck. How in or out of love with Kai, or how traitorous, she might feel afterward.

But it hardly mattered. Because it was over before it began. Stefan didn't belong to her. And she didn't belong to him. He sucked on her neck because she kept her face turned away, for shame. She thought of giving him everything, of turning her face and kissing back, doing to him what was being done to her, but she couldn't. And when he had to stop for the burgeoning erection he knew she wouldn't take in, she saw it.

"You still love her," she said, watching a thought of Elena walk from his left eye to right. To which he sighed and looked out the windshield, at the still tree line. His hand slid off the door handle and he settled back into the driver's seat, turning pensive and sad.

"You still love her and she's still alive," Bonnie went on to a statue of him. Her hands shook and her cunt quaked, and for how wrong it all was she really, really wished she had the emotional stamina to start something with him. He was a good person, with a body that interested her from the first time she saw him, and she was willing to bet her magic that his sex was good sex.

But Kai was the last person she let inside her. She guessed she wanted to hang on to that for a while.

She wished Stefan a merry Christmas and exited the car, finally able to breathe once she was upright, walking and shivering her way to her front door. She fumbled with her keys, trying with some difficulty to find the one that would let her in safely from the burning gaze she felt on her back.

She had barely noticed the puttering noise of the Porsche as it idled at the end of her driveway, until the noise was gone and the night was silent. Stefan had turned the engine over. When she heard a car door open and close, she turned to see him walking up the driveway, looking at her in a way she had never experienced before.

He walked with an assuredness that spelled necessity more than confidence or conceit. They studied each other's eyes as he approached the porch where Bonnie stood, twiddling the found key between her fingers. Maybe he had forgotten to tell her something.

"You're right," he said, taking her steps three at a time so that he was before her in one more stride. Bonnie narrowed her eyes, wishing she had something more than a damned house key to hold onto. "Even after everything that's happened…I still love her. I always will."

She exhaled and paid the ground some attention.

"But…" Stefan went on, only to hesitate. Bonnie looked up into his forests for eyes and he appeared to be deliberating between which of hers to focus on. She felt doe-like and small, and confused about his intentions. She had tea to brew, a row of plants she had forgotten to water that morning, scrambled eggs to whip up and the aching remnants of a buzz to sleep off. This was inconvenient. He was inconveniencing her.

"…It's over. And…just like you, I have to keep going. I have to wake up and live."

Bonnie shook her head impatiently. "Ok?"

"I'm not saying I'm ready for something real. I'm not saying you should be either. But we're both adults. And I can hear your heart beating faster. Plus it's cold tonight, and you're sad and I just…" he trailed off, rolling his eyes and blinking, and Bonnie began to feel guilty that Stefan had picked up so intensely on her misery. He sighed and took a step closer, moving his hand out to perhaps reach out and settle it on her hip, or take her hand, or touch her face, before changing his mind and placing it on his hip. He gave her a second to acquaint herself with his closeness, darting his gaze down to her lips.

"…Please let me in," he said quietly.

Bonnie wanted to smile. Her frown even tightened at the ends. She wasn't used to this kind of opening for romantic encounters. She wasn't used to introduction. Not anymore. No, what she was accustomed to after so much time with Kai was that abrasive kind of seduction that didn't often include words or even warnings. Not so much as being smothered and overwhelmed with closeness, a piercing gaze, an unanticipated kiss, or bite, or sprint for her life.

She sighed and shook her head. They'd already had this conversation in the car. Maybe not with words, but the truth remained: They Shouldn't.

"Go home, Stefan."

It was almost as if she could see his heart falling. But it wasn't pitiful. And he wasn't like Kai. She said to go and, with only the slightest pause, he nodded. And he listened. He took a step back and a final glance into her eyes with his lips pressed together in respectful disappointment.

This was perhaps what most attracted her. And it was Stefan. Stefan. She didn't know him to make sentimental or romantic speeches, however concise. At least not in her direction.

Stefan. He wanted to sleep with her.

Privately marveling to herself, she nodded with a weak smile as he retreated. She turned back to her door and slid her key into the lock, when an unexpected pain sharpened in her hand.

"Ah!" She hissed and winced and whipped her hand away from her keys, dangling from the doorknob. Three drops of blood pelted the doorstep. "Shit…"

Bonnie turned her palm up to find a small slice across the fleshy pad of her forefinger. She glanced at her jangling keys and saw the culprit. The metal cuff on her pom keychain had come loose. Its normally silver edge shined red and wet.

"What's the matter?" Stefan's voice said from behind her. She felt his concerned approach by the ends of the standing hairs all over her skin.

Stefan needn't see the little mess she'd just made. Bonnie clenched her wounded fingers into a loose fist and breathed in while she said, "Nothing, I'm fine."

She wrapped her other hand around the swinging keys and turned them to unlock the door, unable to ignore how tense the air behind her had grown in the matter of a second, and how electric her spine felt all of a sudden. She offered Stefan a reassuring raise of the eyebrows as the lock in her door clicked. But he did not return the look. He was staring at the blood on the ground.

She didn't know why, but her body froze. She just stood there. She needed to open the door and go inside, calmly, like this was nothing. Instead, she waited.

Stefan's expression was tight. His eyes lifted from the small spatter to Bonnie's face. Though stern, he seemed present.

It was painful to acknowledge but even though she knew he should be able to control himself over a few mere drops of blood, she found herself wishing he wouldn't. She missed fear like a body part she had lost. It was why her heart started pounding again, and panic, subdued, weighed like acid in her shoulder muscles.

"How bad is it?" Stefan asked, his eyebrows turned in concern.

It seemed without her own permission that Bonnie opened her fist and showed the vampire her exposed, blood-wet hand. She watched her own fingers tremble slightly and the sight of it caused a kind of click in her brain. She looked from the tremble up to Stefan's studious frown.

"Rogue keychain. Nothing major."

Stefan's brow curled up as he brought his own finger up to his mouth and nipped it. He held his bleeding finger out for her to—to what? Take a lick? It seemed so absurd to her, even though she'd taken vampire blood about a billion times.

They stared at each other for a moment. Stefan's finger began to heal.

She just wanted to feel that needed feeling again. She wanted to nurse someone. To nourish someone. To feel pain and the ghost of him. She didn't care about the consequences anymore.

Bonnie raised her trembling hand to the level of Stefan's mouth, determined to breathe and stand her ground and stare him down until he crumbled for her. With restraint he allowed himself to look upon the offering.

You aren't being you, she thought to herself. And pushed it aside.

Stefan's mouth hung slightly open as he eyed the red in her hand. Was he debating it? Was he tempted now? Was he hungry anyway?

In the matter of a blink, Bonnie felt the cool palm of his hand cup the backside of hers. She started a little, but kept her calm as she watched him take it. Closer to his mouth. A pause for deep struggle inside himself. She remained patient.

You aren't being you.

Stefan breathed in and wrapped his lips around her wounded finger.

It was wet, his mouth.

Warm.

Inviting like the mouth of a vampire should be.

Once her finger rested in alignment with his bed-like tongue, he closed his eyes and held on for a moment. Savored. Bonnie held her breath.

My finger is in Stefan Salvatore's mouth, she thought for a split second of clarity. When she felt that warm wetness around her contract into a suck, and she imagined that a small ribbon of her blood had just been tugged from her veins and down his throat, and she knew that she was in for it now…it turned her on.

Stefan's other hand came to wrap around her wrist. His shoulders curved forward as he stepped in closer, as Bonnie's finger disappeared another inch into his mouth, as a tasting became a feeding. His cheeks hollowed, jaw bones sticking out, while he started sucking and swallowing. Black veins writhed underneath his eyelids.

She was probably going to lose the finger. At the very least.

No, she reminded herself, It doesn't have to end ugly.

She would give him an aneurysm before it got bad. Knowing when to say when, that was all she needed.

That, and to be closer to him.

Bonnie hooked her finger behind his hard top row of fangs and reeled him another step toward her so she could wrap her free arm around the back of his neck. He let her, having succumbed to the power that blood had over him. She thought she might drag him to the ends of the earth with one bleeding finger.

They stood chest to chest, or rather Bonnie stood quivering with excitement and Stefan stooped into her. His hand squeezed around her wrist, then relaxed, then squeezed, then relaxed, stripping her dry like a tube of honey, milking her like a cow, bleeding her like prey too precious.

He breathed heavy through his nose and his frame grew more rigid. He grunted, sparking somewhat of an abominable desire in Bonnie. This wasn't her love and she wasn't his, but there was suddenly something compelling about it, something far too attractive in how wrong it felt.

Bonnie closed her eyes and let her head fall back, leaning against her door, accidentally putting voice into it when she sighed. Suckling with growing fervor, Stefan growled in pleasure at Bonnie's surrender. The sound of it, however, inspired her to snap out of it. He'd been a vampire for a long time. He was a ripper. He was more animal than Kai had ever been, and she wasn't sure yet if it should scare or entice her.

"Stefan," she breathed.

He didn't seem to hear.

Before she could do anything to stop herself, her eyes were wet and dripping. The sensation of hopeless blood loss was too big of a trigger.

"Stefan…" she repeated, losing her voice mid-way.

The vampire released her finger from the suck and stared, open-mouthed and black-eyed. She couldn't tell if he was still him.

You aren't being you.

Had she just set him off? Was this the pause between the awakening of the beast and the start of a new binge?

Then the blackness began to clear out and the green in his irises returned. Bonnie could discern the attention, and the sorrow, and the guilt in his pupils. He let go of her arm. She folded her wet, wounded finger up in another loose fist and used it to wipe some of the tears from her cheeks, feeling rather embarrassed.

Stefan still stared. His gaze only faltered to remind himself of her pouting lips, and then returned to her cloudy eyes.

Bonnie couldn't stand it a second longer. She wanted to be touched, and held, and loved.

She tipped her face up, letting her eyelids lower so she could stare hollowly at Stefan.

He apprehended the cue and cautiously, like he was playing with fire as much as she, closed his lips over hers.

Was this what Kai had in mind?

Stefan tried to rationalize what he was doing by reminding himself that Kai had asked him to distract Bonnie. To keep her busy, to help her forget about him and his death-faking ass.

Yet no part of this felt right, or justified, or even safe. Bonnie's blood thinly coated his tongue and he was feeling that abysmal hunger come up from the core of his belly. He worried if he went any further he might harm her, or that when he tried she might utterly destroy him for it. He had to give her credit for being a fair match in the event of a struggle. At least there was that.

Not to mention the surprising fact that he didn't want to stop.

It wasn't just the promise of blood.

Stefan had to admit to himself it had never escaped him how beautiful Bonnie was. He had always been focused on Elena but he wasn't blind. Bonnie was gorgeous. And he had watched her come into womanhood with so much grace, despite the terrible hand it seemed she was always dealt. Now the two of them, only ever friends in varying degrees, had been dealt respective griefs and it led them here, to this Christmas Eve, and she was too proudly sniffing back stubborn tears while she slipped out of her dress and he watched.

It was dark in her bedroom. Almost as cold as it was outside. He could see the goosebumps rising across her skin as her dress and her black panties fell into a sad little heap at her feet and she revealed herself to him, nervous. He listened to her heart flitting around the inside of her chest. Was she afraid?

All those tears. He had already asked her if she really wanted to do this. Her response was an eager nod, and even as she continued to tear, he believed that she meant it.

He sat on the edge of her bed, naked while he watched her judging him, standing there shivering and folding her arms over her taut breasts. She needed a moment to digest it and he allowed her that, graciously. Until it made him self-conscious and he glanced down at his hard dick revisiting whether or not Kai would kill him for this.

The floorboards creaked and he looked up to view her tip-toeing toward him. He sat up straight to receive her. She raised a knee into the bed at his left hip, and her other tightly magnetized to it.

He had expected her to climb into his lap; it made the most sense; he would've liked to hold her that way. Instead she sat like a dove at his side, hands knotted in her lap, knees pointing the opposite direction of his, facing her pillows with some evident shame.

Shame. It was an attractive look on her, though he intended to kiss it away.

He relished the mournful curvature of her dark jawline as she side-eyed him. Slowly he leaned in to kiss her neck, having to ignore the urgent salivation aroused by the thumping of blood just underneath her skin. She shivered at the touch of his lips and it made him harder. He felt a twinge in his dick and he thought again of how wrong it would be when he put himself inside her, and then he wanted to so much more. Not only to have taken her but to give it to her better than any other man had before. And he had enough sense to resent that about himself but he supposed some part of him was still as animalistic and desperate. He certainly didn't feel inadequate, or jealous, or bitter, and he wasn't concerned that he wouldn't perform to her satisfaction, or to her better pleasure than other "mates" had done. He was not worried about it. But she was still crying and it would kill him not to make her stop. He wanted to surprise her, pleasantly. He wanted to watch her feeling him inside her, enjoy him, if she let herself.

He felt her hand flatten comfortably over his jaw, her fingertips reaching into his hair, curling in unison with every closing of his lips against her throat. Until she pulled his head out of her neck and was ready to kiss him on the mouth.

Instantly he grew nostalgic for the thudding of her neck against his lips, though her mouth tasted just fine. He thought of gently removing her by the jaw so that he could return to running his mouth indulgently over her throat. It felt important to do so, though he knew that was just his vampirism, and he resolved to push back against these instincts. He encouraged her to open her mouth and he touched her tongue with his, noticing her body becoming pliant to him as he leaned in toward her, and she down onto her neatly made lace bedspread. …There was too much lace in her bedroom. It was familiar to him in a way that comforted, unnervingly.

Stefan turned his body to hover over her as she lay curled on her side, picking his feet up off the floor and climbing fully into her bed. He touched her bare shoulder, nicely, and caressed, until with some pressure she seemed comfortable enough to roll onto her back for him. More tears rolled down her cheeks, wetting his lips while he kissed her. He let her mouth go to lick them up in soft kisses.

He was big.

He dwarfed her in the bed but, down there, he was…big. She had always been good at keeping herself from thinking about Stefan in that way, or wondering even idly, and so it was unexpected that she found herself quietly impressed by his size as she had climbed into bed trying not to look at him there directly.

Now he had her on her back and he was licking the stupid relentless tears off her face, and he was lying half on top of her, and his crazy big dick was begging for attention against her outer thigh. He had his hand flat on her vibrating sternum, between her breasts, above her heart, and she could tell that he was enamored with her heartbeat; his fingers never strayed right or left for the flesh of her breasts. Any time he squeezed, it was this flat surface in reminiscence of ripping a heart out of a chest.

He didn't scare her. And she knew he wasn't trying to.

She wished she could stop crying. He was probably so annoyed. And if Kai could see her now, what was he thinking? She was lying underneath somebody else, naked, crying, probably looking as helpless as she felt. Though she wasn't. Stefan was helping her, wasn't he? He seemed intent on clearing every salty drop of agony from her face. He seemed more invested in her wellbeing now more than he ever had. Bonnie wondered why. Was it just that they were both single and it had been a bad night? Or was it deeper than that? Would this ever happen again? After he came, and so to speak conquered…would he ever want her like this again?

She stopped herself. It would do no good to think that way when he was still waiting for her to spread her legs. …Was that why this was taking so long?

She hesitated at first, but as nervous as she felt about it, she was curious and she wanted to know what it felt like to hold him in her hand. With her wounded hand she reached slowly down to her hip until her knuckles brushed the foreign warm thing waiting there. She jerked her hand back against her own skin, not really sure what she was so timid about.

Stefan stopped kissing up tears.

He licked the last of her salt from his own lips and looked down into her eyes.

He wasn't mistaken. She had touched him just barely, and then taken her hand away. He wanted that hand back.

Go ahead, he thought, It's ok.

He would've said it out loud but they had kept up a steady half hour of pregnant silence and it was really working for him. That, and he did not want to seem patronizing.

But after a moment of staring at one another, she with some guilt and he with some probable self-contempt, he heard her heart speed up and then felt her fingers exploring him, wrapping around, palm sliding from the tip of his head down to the base of his shaft and he could not physically keep his jaw from dropping. It was that great pleasure of first touch and he had to bury his face in the crook of her neck so as not to make embarrassing expressions.

Purely on impulse he bared his teeth against her carotid artery and made a starving kind of snarl. His own blood curdled at the sound, until he caught a hike in her heart rate, paired with a sharp intake of her breath, and he recalled the taste of her blood on her finger on his tongue in his belly and every strand of his being called for more.

He bit.

And it was exactly what she had asked for. And everything he never planned on giving to her. Including his mercy when—amid a blindingly delicious hot flood of the good red stuff, despite the ripper in him clawing at all moral sense, seething to suck and suck and shred until Bonnie Bennett was his latest victim and nothing and no one but who was next mattered—something extracted him from the frenzy.

He heard no spell. He felt no pain. He didn't know if it was magic. He didn't know if it was the absolute surrender in her body. An unprecedented organic fucking change of mind. Or was it something in her Bennett blood that protected her from him?

He hated her for a moment. Still he kissed and tongued the blood pulsing from her flesh, cleaning her up to something like a moan he heard through the ringing in his ears. When he felt like himself a moment later, he thought if he wasn't careful he was going to love her.

He gave her his mercy.

Her reaction, once he could perceive it, contradicted his expectations. A tightened grip on his dick. A lustful, however tearful, whine in his ear. A fragrant release of hormone.

All warmed him. He'd done something less than admirable. The bite mark in her neck was still there, not fatally, but redding the lace under her, and he was sure it had to hurt. But he was rewarded.

Rather than shrink in fear, she embraced his nature. Stefan wondered painfully what horribleness Kai must have done, opting to remove himself from such a woman. And with a hard kiss to her jaw, he thrust himself passionately through her grip.

"Spread your legs," Stefan pleaded breathily into her ear, the first words uttered in a while.

He sounded so desperate it almost convinced her. It wasn't that she didn't want to… She was soaked and burning and beyond ready to have him for all he was. The dull pain in her neck was stimulating and terrible and wonderful. She could feel the hair on his legs when he moved against her; his undead body adapting to her warmth and mimicking; his desire, raw and true and unadulterated by doubts or thoughts of anyone else. This was happening, and she was the torn one.

"I know you miss him," he said, reading her thoughts aloud. "But please." Stefan rolled his bare hips over hers, whispering, "Bonnie, please."

In a unique way, she did love him. It was not romantic. But she trusted him, at least in this moment, with her everything. She trusted him to have her, hold her heart and all of those sentimental things a good man would do, if only for a night.

When at last she gave in and let her knees part to ease her achingly clenched thighs, he respected her. It was another while of heated kissing, sweating on the sheets with want, crooked humping for delayed gratification. By the time she felt that warm and insistent thing pushing strongly against her splayed center, there was nothing of hesitance left in her. She fixed both of her hands to his chest and tilted her hips and kissed him on the jaw.

His tip, pleasurably shaped, slid in nicely between her lips.

"Oh my god, Stefan..."

She gasped.

He retracted.

She sighed.

He reentered. Was thick and hurtful, and welcome, and deep.

Like her, he did not smile at how good this felt. He brooded, moaned restrainedly, kissed her on the mouth like a gentlemen and meant well. She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him like her best self, departing.