Who: Tyler and Kyle What: Facetwins running into one another Where: The Hospital When: Mid-April Rating/Warning: Low/none Status: Complete
It had been nearly two years since Tyler had become a hybrid, and in that time he had made regular visits to the hospital. While he generally prefered feeding from the vein, he usually opted for blood bags. It was easier to not get caught. And he hadn’t drank from a live victim since he’d turned off his humanity earlier in the year. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, not after everything he’d done since.
“Hello, Cathy,” he said, walking up to the triage desk. He was glad that it was someone he knew - compelling someone new every time was a bit of a pain, and he knew how Caroline disapproved of compulsion. Just because they weren’t dating anymore didn’t mean that he didn’t still want to live up to her expectations.
“Hello Tyler,” she said cheerily. “The same as usual?” she asked.
“Yes please,” he said, and without another word she got up from her desk and headed toward another part of the hospital, presumably to pack up his blood bags.
And as luck would have it today was the one day that Kyle was working a longer than normal shift which involved a full sixteen hours so by the time he strolled up to the triage desk to hand off his patient files he was definitely exhausted.
So exhausted that for the moment he missed the fact that there was basically a body double stood literally to the right of him.
“So Mr Lawrence in bay 16 needs to have his blood sugar checked on the hour every hour.”
Tyler had been looking on his phone when the doctor came up, only noticing the white of his lab coat. But when he spoke, Tyler glanced up out of instinct, looked down at his phone, and immediately looked back up again. There were a couple of differences. For one, he was pretty sure whoever it was that was standing next to him was a couple years older (Tyler might have been 24, but physically he’d forever be 22), but other than that, it was like looking into a mirror.
His first thought was to wonder if this is how Elena felt in the dreams when she’d first met Katherine, which lead to his second thought: did he have a doppelganger? If yes, why?
He wasn’t really sure what to say, but he felt like he should say something. “Uh,” he started, but was saved from needing to say anything else when the cheerful nurse said “oh, Dr. Valenti! You didn’t tell me you had a brother!” *
Kyle looked up really confused at the nurse who mentioned him having a brother. “I don’t-” He began before something tugged at his peripheral and he turned his head, coming face to face with what looked like a younger but more or less identical version of himself. Maybe right out of highschool or college him, from before everything had gotten even more complicated.
Was he that tired that he was now starting to see things? Is this how his dad felt at times? A million questions raced through his head but all Kyle could do was stand there, stare or rather gawk.
“This isn’t possible,” was what he finally came out with.
“You’d be surprised at what is or isn’t possible in this place,” Tyler said flatly. If this had happened three years ago, he’d be right there with the doctor, but now, after everything he’d seen both while he was sleeping and while awake, there was nothing that would surprise him anymore.
Now… now he was just confused by the prospect that he might just have a doppelganger. He certainly had never dreamed of having one before, though he had just started a new set of dreams. But having a doppelganger, especially one that seemed to be from the same generation as him, didn’t make any sense at all. One thing was starting to become clear though. The interaction he’d had earlier in the week was finally starting to make a bit of sense.
“You must be Kyle,” he said.
Wait, how did this… mirror image of himself know his name? His name tag just read ‘Dr Valenti’ with no first name. “How do you know my name?” He asked, straight to the point as he was with most things. Kyle Valenti did not beat around the bush about anything like ever. Maybe when he’d been younger but not now he was grown.
He turned away from the desk and totally forgot the fact he was supposed to be clocking off and going home because honestly he had not expected to run into somebody who looked like him, sounded like him, and now apparently knew who he was.
“And your name is…?”
“I ran into one of your friends. Alex,” Tyler answered. Alex, who had looked eerily similar to Caleb. This had to be one of the events the OC was pulling, but Tyler couldn’t make heads or tales of it, and he hadn’t seen anyone posting about it on the Network like they normally did when things like this happened.
“I’m Tyler,” Tyler said. “Tyler Lockwood.”
And at what point was Alex going to mention to Kyle that he’d run into somebody who looked a lot like him? Not that it was a concern for Tyler because Tyler wasn’t Alex but it was definitely something for Kyle to bring up with his friend.
“Okay, well, I feel a lot less in the dark than I was about thirty seconds ago but still thoroughly convinced you must be an exhaustion induced delusion.” Only he couldn’t be because nurses were speaking to him, interacting with him, so clearly he was there and present.
“Well, I’m seeing the same thing as you and I got plenty of sleep last night,” Tyler said, as if that might help somehow. “I might not be able to explain it,” at least, he hoped he couldn’t, because the headache that came along with having a doppelganger wasn’t one that he wanted to deal with, “but I’m real, and I assume you are too.”
“Yeah, definitely,” Kyle said with a nod. “Still, weird.” Really weird and he’s not sure how to process this as doppelgangers while largely accepted as being something that did exist he didn’t think they were quite this identical.
He scrubbed his fingers through his hair and decided to look at this from a logical doctor standpoint
“Would you be against me taking a blood sample? I’m curious to see if we’re the same type.”
Tyler frowned. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said. It wasn’t that hybrid blood was particularly dangerous - it could instantly heal people, just like the vampires in his dreams, but it could also turn someone into a vampire if they had it in their system when they died. But Tyler had no desire to be found out quite so easily, and he wasn’t entirely sure how this doctor would react to seeing it. “I don’t like needles,” he added as an afterthought, as if to explain it. “I’m AB though, if that helps.”
AB? That did help but not in the way that Kyle had been hoping for. That was after all his blood type which meant that they didn’t just look alike but they had the same DNA which was beyond disturbing. If he didn’t know about the dreams being a thing and everybody having them he might have been worried that he might be going the same way as his dad.
“Well that confirms that the resemblance is more than just skin deep.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said. “Maybe we were twins separated at birth,” he said, wryly, though he was pretty sure that couldn’t be the case. Kyle didn’t look too much older than him - even if Tyler was permanently stuck at 22 for the rest of eternity - but he did look a bit older, and if he was a doctor he had to be at least a few years older than Tyler.
“Tyler?” Cathy said, looking between the two men, a little confused. She held up the cooler that she’d filled with blood bags for him. “Here’s your order.”
“Thanks,” Tyler said, grabbing it and hoping that the doctor wouldn’t ask about what it was. Cathy, of course, would forget all about it as soon as the cooler left her hands, but this was pretty bad timing.
“I wouldn’t think too hard about it,” he said, turning to the doctor and wondering if he’d be able to follow his own advice. “This is hardly the strangest thing that goes on around here. Hell, it’s practically normal.” Which was easy enough to say, but a whole other thing to process when his own face was staring back at him like it was.
Kyle lifted an eyebrow as Tyler seemed to be collecting something from Cathy, a cooler to be exact, and the only thing a hospital put in a cooler like that was… well, blood. Was he here to transport it somewhere else? It wasn’t unusual for people to pick up blood and courier it to another hospital.
“I’ll try but no promises,” he assured Tyler with a shake of his head. Thankfully he had a lot to keep him busy what with the hospital, his dad, the VA clinic, the free clinic and then the dreams, it was a lot to keep his mind from fixating on the fact there was a much younger looking version of himself wandering around.
Speaking of work, Kyle took his next patient’s information. “I should get back to work.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, relieved that the doctor hadn’t asked about the cooler. He didn’t especially want to have to look himself in the face to compel the idea away. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime, Doc,” he said.