Who: Tyler and Blossom What: Tyler has a talk with Blossom about his relationship with Caroline Where: Tyler's apartment When: Sometime after his talk with Jeremy Rating/Warning: Low/none Status: Complete
Tyler had been putting off telling Blossom about his relationship with Caroline for a long time. For one, he was hoping he’d get used to the bleedover. But it was mostly because he was scared. He didn’t know how to tell Blossom about his real life and his dream history with one of his best friends, and he didn’t want her to be pissed at him. But Jeremy right. The best thing was to tell her. Especially before someone else, someone like Damon, decided to do it for him.
And tonight seemed like a good night to have the talk. They didn’t have any plans other than curling up on the couch and watching Netflix. “Hey, babe,” he said, removing his arm from her shoulder and then adjusting himself so his body was facing her. “Can we talk?”
Really, Blossom loved those times when they could just lay around and relax, especially cuddling on the couch, but then she just liked cuddling with Tyler in general, while she was working up to getting more bold in their cuddling. “Sure,” she moved to pause the program, twisting herself towards Tyler to face him as he turned, “What’s up?”
Wow, this was a lot harder than Tyler had thought it would be. Not that he thought it was going to be a walk in the park in the first place, but he’d been preparing for the talk for a while and he thought it would be easier by now. “There’s something about my dreams I haven’t told you about yet that I probably should have. About me and Caroline.”
“Okay…” Blossom knew that they shared a dream world, she knew that Tyler became a werewolf over there and Caroline turned into a vampire and that’s how they both ended up with these powers. It was why Caroline knew she could help Tyler with his transformations and how they knew the Bonnie girl that helped them make the cave safe. “Like… bad stuff? Or… well, usually the dream stuff is bad stuff, right?”
“No, it’s nothing bad,” Tyler said. At least, it wasn’t depending how you looked at it. He really hoped Blossom wouldn’t think so. While he was prepared to stop hanging around with Caroline if Blossom asked him to, that was a route he’d really rather not take. “It’s… well, in the dreams, Caroline are together. Like, together, together.” He was completely head-over-heels in love with her in the dreams, though he was smart enough to keep that little detail quiet.
Blossom wasn’t sure if she was expecting that. Not really. She wasn’t silly, she knew that Tyler had dating people before her, it wasn’t like he was a priest or whatever. And while she might not have dated as much or anything, she’d had a couple of boyfriends. “Okay…” But she hadn’t actually thought that dream girlfriends would be an issue. Even less so that one of Tyler’s best friends and someone Blossom was counting as a friend herself would be said girlfriend. “Umm… Do you like… Have feelings for her here?” Blossom was smart though, she knew that not everything in this world was the same as in the dreams -she wasn’t five after all. But she knew there could still be a bleed over.
It took a moment for Tyler to meet Blossom’s gaze at the question. The whole point of this was to be honest, but he had no idea just how hard that would be. This was all new territory for him. He’d never actually liked a girl enough to be completely honest with her, and he knew he needed to step carefully so he didn’t screw this up. “Most of it’s just dream bleed over,” Tyler said. “And from the sounds of Caroline’s dreams, we don’t stay together forever.” She’d never said as much, but she was, apparently, engaged to their history professor of all things. “But uh… we do have some history here. From high school. It was nothing serious.” Though that was entirely because Caroline hadn’t wanted things to be serious.
She was pretty sure that wasn’t a ‘no, Blossom, I don’t have feelings for Caroline’, but it wasn’t as if he just confessed his undying love for her either. And Blossom had to remember that it wasn’t as if Tyler was with Caroline, they were just friends here. Very good friends, sure. “Oh, right, okay…” They’d dated (was that the right term if things weren’t serious) in high school, but evidently stayed friends. So it wasn’t like there was some painful, traumatic break up there.
Still, people did that all the time. Blossom was moderately friendly with one of her ex-boyfriends, although not to the point where they hung out a lot and knew some of the biggest, life changing things about each other. She was getting into crazy-girlfriend territory with that line of thinking though.
Still, clearly Tyler wanted to tell her it for some reason -hopefully because he didn’t want awkward discussions down the line, not because something had happened or whatever (crazy paranoid girlfriend territory) and Blossom just had to plaster a smile onto her face and reach over the pat Tyler’s hand. “The dream stuff can be hard, right? But um… I know that you guys are very close friends,” and Blossom liked Caroline, and she trusted Tyler, she really did. “But thank you, for telling me, rather than just pretending.”
Tyler could tell that the smile wasn’t entirely genuine, and that kind of sucked. He’d have been really, really surprised if she had been smiling genuinely at him right now though. He turned his hand so he could grab hers, and then reached for her so as to tuck her beautiful red hair behind an ear. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. But I,” he stumbled over his words. Now was not a good time to let the L-bomb drop; he didn’t want her thinking he was saying it just to distract her. “I care about you too much to keep pretending. You have a right to know.”
It was important, right? It was a big deal. Tyler was telling her so that no one else could spring it on her; because he thought someone might? Or it might come up at some point? Maybe because he thought they’d be together for a while? And Blossom really wanted that one to be a big part of it. He cared about them enough that he was heading off a potentially awkward moment with an awkward moment. That was something. “I care about you a lot too, by the way.” Because she sort of did like that part of it, telling her because he cared, not because he was worried about someone else saying something.
She gave his hand a squeeze back, her smile a little less strained. “I really do appreciate you telling me.”
Tyler brought Blossom’s hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, looking Blossom in the eye. “I appreciate you not being angry about it,” he said, smiling at her. He’d been prepared to stop hanging out with Caroline if Blossom thought that was best, but he was glad she hadn’t asked him to do that much. “You really are the best girlfriend.”
“Can’t control what we dream, right?” The flutters in her tummy were back, the way he smiled at her and kissed her hand, and she genuinely believed that. And she wasn’t about to ruin her friendship or Tyler’s with Caroline just because of dreams. “You’re pretty great yourself, you know.” Blossom just scooted closer, pressing a kiss to Tyler’s lips with a quick and easy smile.
Tyler returned her kiss with one of his own. His stomach had been twisting itself into knots thinking about having this conversation with her, but he realized he shouldn’t have been so nervous, and he felt more at ease now than he had in the days leading up it. “That’s why we’re so perfect together.”