Disclaimer: I don't own TVD. If I did Tyler/Jeremy would be secretly together.
A/N: This is Post-Plan B, but before Masquerade.
Friends
It's three in the morning when Jeremy finally gets home from the hospital. He's alone for the night, Elena is at Matt's, Jenna is at the hospital, and he's too wound up to sleep. I should probably clean up all the blood, he thinks as he makes his way towards the kitchen, but someone else has already beat him to scrubbing the floors.
"Tyler? What are you doing here?" Jeremy asks, he and Tyler are friends, but cleaning up someone's aunt's blood off their kitchen floor was above and beyond.
"I..umm…heard about what happened with Jenna." Tyler shrugged, not looking up from the floor. "And I know she and my uncle are friends, and if he were here he'd be doing this, so I figured since he can't, then I would."
Jeremy doesn't know what to say. He knows what happened to Mason, he was there when Mason died, and now it's eating at him. Just…Just help Tyler. So instead of saying anything, Jeremy just rolls up his sleeves and starts helping clean up the floor.
It takes an hour, but Tyler finally blurts out that his uncle has gone back to Florida and Jeremy knows that even though he doesn't say it, Tyler is upset. He may have openly admitted to not trusting the guy, but he wanted to and that meant a lot in the world of Tyler Lockwood. Tyler never wanted to trust anyone, his guard was always up, but with Mason it had been different.
"I'm sorry" Jeremy offers, shrugging.
"Don't say you're sorry Gilbert, I don't need your pity." Tyler grumbles, angrily scrubbing the tile in the kitchen. He's scrubbing so hard that Jeremy is starting to wonder if Tyler's blood is taking the place of Jenna's on the kitchen floor. "Damn it! Why the hell won't this stupid crap come up?"
Help Tyler. Mason's voice flutters through his head again, and Jeremy sighs quietly. Abandoning his sponge, he moves to grab his friend's hands to stop Tyler's frantic scrubbing. "Tyler, it's okay man. All of it isn't going to come up."
"Mason would get it all up" Tyler seethes, pulling his hands out of Jeremy's reach. "Mason would…"
"Mason would what, Tyler?" Jeremy asks softly.
"Mason would be a dick and leave." The older boy mumbles, throwing his sponge against the nearest row of cabinets in anger. Jeremy can see Tyler trying to regain his composure, but it's too late, he's already seen a few tears slide down his friends face. Angrily swiping his cheeks, Tyler curses, "No, Lockwood's don't cry. They don't get upset and they don't cry."
"Well maybe today you aren't a Lockwood. Maybe today you're just a guy whose father just died and whose uncle just up and abandoned him. And I don't know about you, but if that guy wanted to cry right now I wouldn't blame him or say anything to anyone about it."
"Okay" Tyler whispered, sobs wracking his body. He didn't even care that he'd never allowed himself to be this vulnerable with anyone, or that Jeremy had moved to hold him as he cried.