Who: Tyler and Stefan When: January Where: The House What: Meeting again for the first time Ratings/Warnings: Low/None Status: Complete
Tyler was a little surprised at how good it was to see Caroline again. He’d thought he might run into her, but he’d kind of expected the whole thing to be a little more awkward than it was. He hoped Caroline wasn’t busy. Instead of shooting her a text before heading over with some homework and a couple of coffees, he decided he’d just show up at her house and surprise her. He really hadn’t expected the house to be quite so large, though Caroline had mentioned she had three roommates, so maybe it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. He rang the doorbell, and then checked his reflection in the window to make sure his hair looked okay.
The Dreams had been knocking poor Stefan for a loop. He was struggling not to turn off his humanity by night, and not to lose control and become the Ripper by day. It was taking a lot out of him, so when he came to answer the door, he looked sickly and pale, with dark bags under his eyes. There was a smile, though, and it was somewhat genuine. “Hi. Can I help you?” He asked. He’d spent some time with Tyler in his Dreams. He had to remind himself that he didn’t know Tyler in this world. Right?
Tyler was, at first, surprised when Stefan answered the door, but Caroline had mentioned she had lived with him, hadn't she? Stefan had been a couple grades above Tyler in high school and they'd never talked much, but Tyler still recognized him on sight even if the older man was looking a little worse for wear now. Apparently Stefan didn't recognize him though, and that pissed him off a little. “Tyler. Tyler Lockwood? We went to the same high school, bro. Listen, is Caroline home?”
Stefan feigned recognition when Tyler introduced himself. “Oh yeah, Tyler. Hey, how’s it going?” He asked, then stepped aside to let Tyler into the house. At least, he assumed Tyler could come in. To the best of Stefan’s knowledge, Tyler wasn’t a vampire. Not like the rest of them. “Caroline’s… you know, I’m not sure where she is at the moment. Might be out shopping with Anna. You want to wait?”
Was this guy for real? First he’d obviously forgotten Tyler, and now he was pretending to know him just because Tyler called him out. It wasn’t that Tyler didn’t realize that that was a ridiculous thing to get angry about, but it still took him a moment to squash down the urge to start a fight. After getting kicked off the Duke football team, Tyler really was making an effort to control his anger a little more. “It’s going fine,” he said after a moment, stepping into the house. “How about you?”
“It’s all right,” Stefan said, closing the door behind Tyler after the dark haired guy came into the house. “Not sleeping all that well, but sometimes that’s the way things go.” He moved through the living room area to the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink while you wait?” It’d be interesting to Stefan to know how much of the Dream life Tyler was aware of.
“You don’t complain of dreams too, do you?” Tyler asked. He hadn’t had any dreams himself, but everyone of that weird website seemed to go on about them, and even Caroline had mentioned something about having strange dreams. It seemed farfetched to Tyler, but if everyone was going on about it, maybe there was something to it after all. “If you have any beer, that’d be alright.”
Stefan had been dreaming the same thing over and over again. It was torture. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk much about it, though he was curious about Tyler’s experience with the whole thing. “Beer.” He repeated, thinking about a way to answer the question. “...Yeah, I’ve been suffering from some Dreams,” he said, moving to the fridge and pulling out a couple of beers. “...what do you know about them?” Stefan popped the top off of one of the bottles and held it out to Tyler.
Tyler took the beer and took a swig. “Just that everyone on that website seem to be obsessed with them,” Tyler said, shrugging. “I’d think they were all nutjobs if Caroline didn’t say she had them too.” Though, he still wasn’t exactly sold on the fact that Caroline wasn’t going a little bit crazy.
“Oh. Yeah.” Stefan agreed, then gulped from his own bottle. He wasn’t really surprised that Caroline had told Tyler about the dreams, but he was curious as to how much she’d told him about them. “They make people a bit crazy, though, so the nutjob part isn’t that far off the mark.”
“I’m so glad I came back home,” Tyler muttered sarcastically. He took a long pull from his beer bottle.