Work Text:
He’s only been gone two days from Mystic Falls and he has twenty-seven voicemails. Ten are from his mother, in panic mode crying her eyes out, ten more are from Caroline freaking out, ’call me Tyler please.’, two are from Matt asking when he is coming home because their last conversation made it seem like he was going to kill himself, Stefan and Elena both call reassuring him that he didn’t know everything when he tried to kill his childhood friend, the sheriff calls once telling him he is now a missing person and he better get his ass back home for his mother’s sake.
Jeremy calls trying to act cool asking him if he wants to go play a game of pool not letting on that he knows that he’s not even in state. The last message almost, definitely almost, makes Tyler cry. Its from Damon who says if he doesn’t return now that he will hunt him down and rip his heart out like he did with Mason but its not the Mason part that makes Tyler Lockwood emotional, it’s the fact he can hear Caroline’s sobs muffled behind Damon’s angry voice.
Whenever he thinks of messaging Caroline just to let her know that he’s sorry and is safe he sees Jules and remembers what they, he, did to her. Caroline Forbes will always hate him even if she doesn’t think so.
But she wipes her eyes and tells Tyler she is fine when he gives her a look only a Lockwood could give. Grieving when they are on the run from vampires doesn’t seem like a smart idea.
The motel they are at has only one bed so they share. Tyler’s slept with enough people not to care who he shares a bed with and Jules sees Tyler as mini Mason so its not as weird as it seems.
But Tyler’s been having nightmares of what Brady did, what he let him, do to Caroline. His sweat fills the sheets, his shirt’s been off for hours, and he wakes up screaming every night. He watches Jules, whose sitting by the window, holding that picture while crying as a bottle of bourbon is in her other hand. She gives him a look and he does the same. It’s the only reassuring thing that either of them can do.
Tyler rolls over and tries to go back to sleep. He never can and its worse when he can hear Jules’s crying. All it reminds him of is Caroline.
Jules watches Tyler’s body pretending its Brady’s but her guy has more muscles than the eighteen year old before her.
Tyler can barely open his eyes, he’s going to cry, when he steps foot into Mason’s room. It has his surf boards and posters of hot chicks hanging on the wall. Its so his uncle. But when his eyes stop on his pee wee football picture the tears come out. There’s Caroline next to him holding a sign that says, You Better Win Tyler!, on it. She was his cheerleader that season. She would make him peanut butter cookies even if his favorite were chocolate chip because that’s all she knew how to make.
But the one time she tried chocolate chip they were way too salty and they had a nice fight about that. Now all he wants is to sit on her bed eating all the junk food he can find in the Forbes’s household as Caroline sips at her blood. All he wants is his Caroline back.
Like Tyler.
Before she knows it she’s standing above Tyler who is having that nightmare again. She plays with his hair trying to say soothing words to a teenager whose still asleep. Its like she is his mother though that couldn’t be the case.
Jules would never have children now. Brady is gone. Mason too.
She kisses the top of Tyler’s forehead.
“I’ll take care of him Mase.”
Tyler’s not sure how long he’s been gone well he does but he’s trying not to think about it. His days are spent talking to a cat that somehow ended up at Mason’s house. It was a pet of someone in the pack. Someone who was dead. He’s not sure how a wolf like human had a cat for a pet. Jules told him that the cat was only staying until the owner’s ex came to pick it up.
But his days are spent showing the cat the fifty plus photos of Caroline he has on his phone. Yes if someone saw the pictures and didn’t know about how Caroline helped him out at a rough time then he would be labeled a stalker.
There’s a picture of Caroline wearing his football helmet. He remembers that day clearly since she was dancing around and smashed her head into the wall.
He even has a picture of her sleeping so yeah he might be stalkerish.
But it doesn’t matter because all he has left now are those pictures. He can’t call or text her, he just can’t. So if that means he’ll sit around talking to a cat about Caroline then so be it.
He knew Jules would say something along the lines of ‘vampires are tracking us and you going out in the night when they could easily kill you is a dumbass move.’
So he was a dumbass.
He needed to get a workout in or he definitely would strangle the cat. It didn’t help that every time he tried to close his eyes that night that Caroline popped in his mind wearing next to nothing. So running a mile, okay three, before he could maybe get his brain to stop making him so damn horny was worth Jules’s backlash.
He made sure to stop his mp3 player after Back in Black ended when he walked into the house not to wake up his, pack mate, yes Jules wasn’t his friend, not really, and she was sure not his kidnapper so pack mate it was.
But he didn’t expect to see what he saw.
Jules, hair braided, doing one armed push ups. She looked like a freaking terminator, Sarah Connor Chronicles edition. They looked at each other and knew what it meant. The damn full moon was coming up and they needed a plan.
But its only Jules and Tyler left. He doesn’t see why they can’t just use Mason’s garage but he goes along with it.
There is only one locker-room so they’ll have to change in front of each other. Jules tells him that she is the only woman in the pack. There was a girl, Molly, who was a member but she died in childbirth, her due date was on a full moon. Tyler doesn’t even want to know what happened to the baby.
Tyler’s not sure he should be watching Jules get the chains ready because she is wearing next to nothing and that only reminds him of the time he walked in on Caroline changing for the Miss Mystic Falls court.
He’s not sure how he will make it tonight without Caroline there telling him everything will be ok. He can see Jules’s anger for everyone she has lost and wonders what will become of them.
Its before noon and Tyler gets another voicemail from his mother.
“Tyler, honey. It's your mother. I don't know where you are, but I need you. I've had an accident and I'm in the hospital.”
He listens to it five times before he lets Jules hear it. Tyler wants to go back. He might not like it but its his mother and she has nobody else. She needs her son.
She can deal with learning to live alone or to start a new life but she can’t deal with Tyler doing something stupid only to get himself hurt. God and she knows where he will be headed after he finds out his mother will be okay.
After he wakes up in the tomb Caroline’s words repeat in his mind.
“You shouldn't have come back here.”
Because Jules, his friend, is with the two most important people now. Brady and Mason will take care of her. He’s never really understood her friendship with his uncle but he knows that wherever they are, be it heaven or hell, or some godly dimension, that they are at least together.
And that’s all Jules ever wanted.
He knows he needs to head to Florida to clean up Mason’s place and find a place for the cat. He’ll surprise Caroline with a road trip tomorrow. He know she will come along because she hasn’t left his side since his return.
He has no pictures or possessions of Jules so to honor her memory he will take advantage of the time he has with Caroline. He doesn’t want to look back years later and think how damn stupid he was. Caroline Fucking Forbes is on his bed. He better make his move or sooner or later something else will creep its way into Mystic Falls.
Be it a werewolf or vampire.
All he knows is that he’s got the advantage with a hot blonde blood sucker at his side.