Disclaimer: I totally forgot to add this the first time. It's been a VERY long time since I posted a fic. I don't own anything in this fic, except for the pattern that the words fall in. The characters, the names, and the back story belong to LJ Smith and the CW and the big dogs who write TVD.
I'm posting this on fan at jason350 (LJ)'s request. Please review, because reviews make pretty stories prettier, and I hope that is what you will take away from my story. The broken, fragile beauty beneath all of this debris, a little bit hidden but never quite diminished. This was written for a Tyler/Jeremy summer prompt fest on Livejournal. The prompt was: What happens next. This is what happens next. Jeremy's voice is thrashed because he got his stomach pumped, and he's a bit OOC because that is a painfully exhaustive procedure. I hope everything else is in working order, and you enjoy it. Review.
You felt nothing. And it was epic.
But that isn't what you remember. You remember waking up, gasping and choking, sucking air into your gaping mouth and sputtering uselessly. You're told that Tyler Lockwood, of all people, found you. He couldn't wake you, he was hysterical and it makes you laugh. Because it sounds fake. So unreal. Tyler Lockwood - caring? Yeah. Right. He's still here, just out in the waiting room if you want to talk to him. You don't. You agree to anyway.
He isn't so eager to see you now that you're awake. He's playing coy, reluctantly slipping into the room. He's already mumbling by the time he makes it to a hospital chair. He's mumbling and stuttering, punctuating each half verbal thought with a forced, heartbroken laugh. But your head's fucked up, your mind's too sluggish to untangle his words and you're sore. You tell him to just spit it out. The snapped command is mitigated by your voice, which is thrashed, nothing more than a harsh croak. He looks startled and lost. You want to apologize, but you don't.
"I'm sorry I fucked things up, man," he says, his voice a croak, but not like yours. He sounds tired, dead. You sound feeble, but alive, struggling with a fire only death can remedy. Tyler sounds dead, and you wonder when that had happened. When had Tyler died? Had he always been like this? Had you just missed it this entire time, seeing something else, something that wasn't there, something that was already gone? "I know what you were going for, offing yourself. I should have let you. You probably deserve it."
You frown, but your expression doesn't change. The muscles of your face refuse to move. It sounds like Tyler just insulted you, but he continues on. "I don't know how you do it, man," he breathes out, and when he speaks again, he sounds breathless, like he just exhaled every ounce of oxygen in his lungs and he's too rushed to pause in an attempt to reclaim that lost oxygen. It's either, speak or breathe, speak or breathe, and right now he's trying to keep up with his words because these words are more important than breathing. "Losing your parents like that. My dad was a dick and I still feel like I'm in shock, or something. Traumatized. I can't breathe, like my lungs stopped working, or the air is thicker, or something. But you went an entire year, man, gasping and choking, but breathing and moving. I can't move, man."
You're still frowning at Tyler, trying to make sense of the words tumbling out of his mouth. They won't all fit together inside of your head, so you settle for watching Tyler's lips move. He's still talking and you reach over and press your fingers to his lips. Your arm trembles with the weight of your movement and your fingers are feeble, feather light. He stops mid-sentence. He sits there. "You're talking," you tell him, your fingers flattening against his lips, almost caressing, but he doesn't call you on it. "Too much."
"Sorry," he says it against your fingers, a word so breathless and so honest and so foreign to your ears that you almost miss it entirely. "I don't know what to say." That makes sense to you. He doesn't know what to say so he says everything. You get that. He's desperately shooting blindly, in the dark, hoping to catch something that matters - just a sentence, a line, that means something. You get it.
"I'm sorry," you tell him, and your voice cracks painfully.
He shakes his head; you can see the confusion in his eyes, pleading with you to tell him what the fuck that's supposed to mean. Sorry? For what? No one is ever sorry to Tyler Lockwood. No one ever cares enough to feel any semblance of remorse, not for Tyler Lockwood. You're openly stroking his lips now, and he isn't talking against your fingers anymore. He's still loud as fuck, talking - going on and on - with his eyes, and you want to tell him to be quiet again, but your eyes have gone quiet, so you use your mouth instead. "I didn't know." Your voice cracks again, on the last word, it shatters completely and you swallow hard; it feels like you can feel pieces of that shattered word in your throat. Know. Just stabbing at the soft flesh inside of you. You think you can taste blood, filling up your throat and then your mouth, choking you. You cough, and it's a wet cough that hurts and churns your stomach painfully and you take a moment to gasp and cringe. Tyler asks if you're okay without saying a single word. You're not, and you know he knows that so you don't answer him. "About your dad. I didn't know."
Recognition. He knows that, he gets that. He doesn't blame you for being selfish, for trying to off yourself when there's so much weight crushing down on everybody else. Why should you - of all people - get to escape this hell? Why do you get the out? When you're so eager, so very willing to leave everyone else. Don't even think twice about it, do you? You don't explain that you intended to come back, that you would only be gone for a little bit. It's a lie. Even if you did come back, you really would be gone forever. People don't just die, they change and leave and are dead forever. When you become a vampire, you lose your humanity and you lose yourself and you become this other person. And you should have told Tyler that. You should have said goodbye, except you didn't. Because you hadn't cared, but you care now. Now, you see the pain in his eyes, and it hurts you. "I didn't know," you repeat, you whisper, and your voice shakes but it doesn't crack this time.
It doesn't change anything. It isn't supposed to.
"It doesn't matter," he mumbles. Your fingers leave his lips, your hand curls to the sculpted curves of his face, and he leans into the touch like a battered dog, fearful of being hit but so eager for the possibly gentle touch.
"Yes, it does," you say knowingly. You don't hit him, he knows you won't, but he can't shake the eager reluctance.
"I'm sorry I fucked up," he repeats.
"No, you're not," you say knowingly. His eyes close, because he doesn't want to see you anymore. He doesn't like looking at dead things, and you're as dead as they come. But he's too selfish to let you go, because you're the only thing that makes him feel alive, and sometimes you're okay with that.
Your family comes back to you hours later, when visiting hours are almost over, just to look you over, just to make sure you're in one piece. Like maybe you'd have gashes all over your body, missing and broken limbs, all from overdosing on painkillers. They find Tyler in your bed, curled around you like you're the big stuffed bear he's always wanted, always needed. He's underneath the thin hospital issued blanket, his jean clad leg pressed in between your bare ones, a reassuring weight. Your bodies are molded to each other, fitting perfectly. There are tear stains on your neck, on your hospital gown, on Tyler's cheeks, in your eyes. His lips are parted, on your neck, his breath hot against your skin, slow and even, unconscious. And you're stroking through his impossibly short hair, feigning sleep yourself, just so your family can't interrupt this moment, just so you can own this moment completely. Just you and Tyler. Something perfect, that your family would destroy if they could, but you won't let them. You sleep.