Who: Tyler Lockwood, Yue Katou, Michael Glass What: Tyler brings blood to the babiest vampire When: A few months ago Where: The Glass House Rating/Warnings: Low/Medium Status: Complete when posted
It wasn’t very often that Tyler was called upon to help a newbie vampire, but given that he’d been a vampire - or, well, a hybrid - for the last couple of years, it seemed only right. Caroline was generally better at this kind of thing, which was no doubt why Elena had gone for her help over Tyler’s, but he wasn’t going to send someone who didn’t know Caroline was a vampire to Caroline if she hadn’t volunteered first.
He had made sure to grab a couple of extra blood bags from the hospital for Michael this time, and he had them in hand now, in a small cooler, when he rang the doorbell.
It didn’t take long before some blond guy answered the door, and he was pretty sure that it wasn’t Michael. Sure, he’d only ever met Michael on the Network, but this guy didn’t look anything like his profile picture.
“Is Michael here?” Tyler asked.
The blond kid gave him a once over, frowning, and then turned into the house. “Hey, Mika, some meathead with a cooler is here for you.” Which caused Tyler to raise his eyebrows, though he managed to bite back the comment that was on the tip of his tongue.
***
Michael had forgotten to let Kat know that Tyler was coming over until right as he heard the doorbell ring and before he could say anything his boyfriend was heading towards the door to answer it. He sighed when he heard the other man refer to Tyler as a meathead, heading towards the door and resisting the urge to give Kat a hug as he walked past. “Come on in Tyler. Ignore Katou. He has an interesting sense of humor.” He said, waving Tyler in and watching to see how the house reacted to this new person. It was the only real test for whether he could trust Tyler or not that he’d found out here.
***
“Gladly,” Tyler said to the comment about ignoring Katou, though he still managed to get intimidatingly close while he swaggered past him. Katou didn’t seem terribly intimidated by it though, and stuck out his tongue at Tyler as he walked past.
He gave another look to Katou, and then to Michael. “You alright with him staying here?” he asked. He didn’t know how open Michael was about his vampirism, but from the way Katou snorted, it didn’t seem like the kid was willing to go anywhere.
***
Michael had to bite back a laugh at that snort but he did shoot Katou a look that he hoped said play nice. This guy was here to help him not go murdering the delivery people that came up to the house or fans at the shows. “Yeah. He can stay. We don’t keep a lot of secrets from each other and he was here when I turned.” Even if he’d wanted to keep it from his boyfriend he couldn’t have because of that.
***
Tyler wondered at that a little bit - it seemed likely that Michael would have turned in the middle of the night - but he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like their relationship was much of his business anyway. He put the cooler of blood bags on the living room table, and sat down in a chair, opening the cooler as he did so. He pulled one of the cool blood bags from the cooler, and lobbed it gently at Michael.
“It tastes a little better if you warm it up a bit, but I figure you’re probably pretty hungry right now. You can use the spout thing as straw. Just like a Capri Sun,” he added the last with a bit of a wry smile.
***
Michael caught the blood bag, noticing that it registered a little cool even to his touch, and would probably be even more cold to someone else, and turned it over in his hand to look at it. He could smell the blood through the small opening of the spout and he felt his fangs extend a little bit, cutting into his lip as he looked up at Tyler. “Rare meat doesn’t cut it quite as much as I’d like.” He admitted as he put the spout in his mouth and took a drink, almost embarrassed by his obvious reaction to the taste as he sat down in the chair opposite the other man.
***
“Yeah, it doesn’t really work like that,” Tyler said, averting his gaze a little so that Michael could enjoy his first feed without the scrutinization. The blond guy didn’t seem to have such reservations though, and watched Michael with furrowed brows. “There’s a guy in my dreams who drinks blood exclusively from animals. It keeps him from desiccating, but he’s weaker because of it and sometimes he -”
“Hey, how’s it taste?” Katou said, nudging Michael a little, as if Tyler wasn’t even there or hadn’t been in the middle of a sentence. Tyler scowled at him, reminding himself that he could probably snap Katou in half if he tried to pick a fight.
***
Michael was definitely learning that it didn’t work the way he’d been trying to and he drained the bag almost completely before being able to stop himself and pull it away from his mouth, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand sloppily. “Better than anything I’ve eaten or drank since this change.” He said, putting the bag back at his mouth and draining it, a little moan actually escaping him this time.
He turned his attention back to Tyler. “Sometimes he what?”
***
Katou tried not to be too jealous as Tyler pulled another blood bag from the cooler and lobbed it at Michael. It was stupid, maybe, to be jealous of a bag filled with blood, but Michael had never moaned like that with anything Katou had ever cooked him. Not even when he’d still been human.
“Sometimes he lost it. He’d get a taste, and then he’d go on a killing spree. They called him a Ripper. I guess it would be like a junkie who’d been clean for a while, and then would go on a massive bender.”
Katou winced a little, and then got up. This wasn’t fun anymore, and he was starting to get bored. “I’m going to go to the music room,” he said to no one in particular, not looking at Michael or Tyler as he turned to leave the room.
***
Michael didn’t even notice the way Katou reacted to his response, too busy opening up the second bag of blood and drinking. He’d been a lot closer to losing control than he’d realized by how much he was enjoying the blood that Tyler had brought him.
He frowned a little at that analogy, forcing himself not to reach out for Kat’s hand or look at him to see his response. “So that’s what we’re trying to avoid with me. Not really a good idea for a musician to go crazy on the audience like that.” He said trying to joke.
“Kat-ou. You don’t have to leave.”
***
Katou raised a hand as he was leaving the room, waving off Michael’s protests. Being here with Tyler and Michael, and seeing that the other man shared something with Michael that Katou never would, was making him too angry, and he didn’t want to do something that he might regret. “Come get me when you’re done if you want,” he said, and left the room.
Tyler watched him leave, feeling like he had missed something, but ultimately said nothing. “No, definitely not a good thing.” He paused, wondering if his advice would be unwarranted or not, and then decided to go for it anyway. “You might consider trying to get out of the public view,” he said after a moment. “Eventually, people are going to start noticing that you don’t age. And if you’ve got the press watching you, it’s going to be harder to cover up exactly what you do to survive.”
***
Michael was going to have to go check on Kat after Tyler left and try and smooth things over with his boyfriend because he could tell that something was bothering him. Something about this judging by the quick change in attitude.
“I spent a year out of it when I was trapped in this house as a ghost. Right now...I’m enjoying being back in it too much. Getting to perform again.” He said quietly. “Why do I need to cover it up around here though?”
***
“You don’t need to cover anything up,” Tyler said. “Though there aren’t many people who know I’m a vampire. My girlfriend, and the other people who share my dreams. That’s it, aside from you.” Well, them and Alice, and whoever it was that had rescued her from him, but he wouldn’t mention her. “How many people you tell is up to you. But being open about it on the Network is one thing. Letting the entire world find out…” Tyler shrugged. “The last thing any of us want is people taking it upon themselves to become vampire hunters.” It would definitely make his and Caroline’s lives harder.
***
“Point. I guess it’s not just my secret I’d be putting out there huh?” Michael frowned a bit as he thought about that answer. He’d have to talk to his agent. After he talked to Amycus and came up with some story for sudden retirement after a year of house arrest. Maybe the guys would be okay with strictly recording and only doing local concerts. Or they’d be up for finding somebody to replace him as frontman. If it had just been him? No problem, he’d come out as a vampire but if he was open about it it wouldn’t take long for people to figure out that where there was one there were probably others.
***
Tyler frowned. He could tell that Michael didn’t seem especially pleased with this. “Well, if you have your bloodlust under control, it will probably be a few years before people start realizing you’re not aging,” he said slowly, not sure if that was the right choice. There had never been any vampires who had been famous in his dreams, despite many who were talented enough to be. There had to be a reason for that.
***
“Guess we’ll just have to keep an eye on me around the mailman right?” Michael said with a wry smile. He shook his head slowly. “Sorry. It’s just...this is the only thing I ever wanted for my life - this career. Getting to this point. And now because of these damn dreams I’m going to have to give it up when I finally got it back. When I finally got performing back.”
***
“Yeah, these dreams never make anything easy,” Tyler said, frowning. “I had to give up thinking about a football career too.” He hadn’t been sure if he had the stuff to make it to be a pro-ball player, before he’d become a werewolf at least, but even if he had, he couldn’t as a hybrid. He thought he generally had pretty good control, even when people were bleeding around him, but there’s no way he would have been able to sneak past the physicals. He’d been lucky that he’d been able to finish off the last year of his college ball playing.
***
“We should put up a sign someplace - if you want a career in the public eye or dealing with people in any sort of large scale you should not live here.” Michael said a little bitterly. He sighed and turned the blood bag in his hands. “It’s just going to take me some time to be okay with having to walk away from my career. Or at least the public parts of it.” He could keep writing songs and recording in his basement maybe.
***
“I’m pretty sure the sign should just read ‘don’t live here,’” he muttered darkly. He did love being a hybrid - he loved the power, and the strength, and the idea of immortality, and now that he was no longer sired to Klaus, there weren’t many downsides. But he did not love the Dreams, or what they put him through. No, he’d probably have been happy as a human if he had never Dreamed of anything else, happier even, maybe.
“Just give it some thought,” he said. It was about all he could ask.
***
Michael gave a short laugh at that muttered comment and shook his head. "Even better." He agreed.
"I will. Thanks for this." He said holding up the bag before taking another drink.
***
“If you ever need anymore, just let me know,” Tyler said. “I can show you how to get some of your own too, if you want.”
***
“I’ll take you up on that sometime I think.” Michael said with a small smile of gratitude. “For now though - I should probably let you get on to other stuff.” And he should probably go make sure Katou was okay and smooth over things with him if necessary.