title: wear me like a locket around your throat.
pairings: damon salvatore/elena gilbert. implied tyler lockwood/caroline forbes.
rating: t.
disclaimer: i do not own the vampire diaries. i do not own fall out boy.
warnings: spoilers up to latest episodes released. language. (character death.?)
words: 6,797.
prompt: the rise and fall (and rise) of damon and elena's relationship through the eyes of another character. i don't mind who the character is—so long as it isn't bonnie or an oc. written for the 2010 Damon/Elena Secret Santa Exchange at the damon_elena community on LiveJournal.
summary: six days after elijah physically removed katerina petrova's head from her shoulders, they disappear.
author Notes: i like this title—as you can tell, i've been listening to too much old school fall out boy lately—but this could easily also have been titled "my love affair with caroline forbes." xD this prompt? loved it, loved it, loved it. it took me forever to actually decided how i wanted to write it out, so sorry it's so late. i hope this is what you want, whoever you are. (:
drink down that gin and kerosene and come spit on bridges with me.
"She left? Just like that?"
She wonders if this will ever feel normal—drinking a bottle of blood in a cage of a cave, in the middle of the forest, while she watches Tyler Lockwood reinforce his steel manacles with stronger ground plating. After the last full moon, he'd ripped the six-by-six steel mounts straight out the ground. In fact, she's not sure which part is stranger: the blood-drinking, the fact that Tyler is a werewolf, or the fact that she finds herself steadily obsessed with the way the muscles in his arm move underneath the stretch cotton of his t-shirt. She's held those muscles—clenched and restrained them while they flexed like steel during transformations and then soothed and rubbed them while cradling him after. The intimacy level she continues to experience with a boy she once thought she hated is new and strange, but she can't bring herself to go.
She busies herself by taking another gulp of blood and nearly winces at the taste. A year so ago, the things she hated would change with her mood; from heels that pinched her toes or how her straightener caused split ends, the way boys' eyes went to Elena before her or how red looked better on Bonnie.
Her biggest worry now is on the freshness of the blood she drinks, the taste and where it comes from. She's partial to A-, but can stand the either O's, and anything with even a hint of B makes her sick to her stomach. Tonight, she's dining on O+. It's lukewarm—the worst temperature for blood. Anything close to 98.6 is practically perfect. Overheating it past 100 kills the flavor, like overcooking pasta; it's just gross. Keep it 'fridged and it'll keep from going stale. Room-temperature is like drinking week-old soda, flat and with a nasty aftertaste.
Even so, she drains half the bottle before even looking back at Tyler, bent over on all fours as he works. When she does, she finds him frozen with a perturbed expression on his face, and her dark eyes widen with embarrassment. "What?"
Tyler scoffs and shakes his head, sits back on his calves. "I said, "she left—just like that?" Thanks for paying attention."
"I'm sorry, I'm just distracted!" she frets, toying with a stray strand of hair that's fallen out of her ponytail. It's easier than staring at the bulge of muscle in Tyler's bicep. "Yesterday… Bonnie said some things. I've just been thinking every since. You know me. Thinking's not exactly a good idea."
He rolls his eyes. "You're not stupid Care—you just have the attention span of a nat."
She tries to feel insulted, but it's true. Talking to her is like talking to a child on Ritalin and she knows it. Hearing it doesn't make her feel any better, but there's nothing insulting in his tone. He's just making conversation, like he always does with her.
"How long do you have?" she asks instead, fiddling with the bottlecap between her thumb and forefinger. "Before the next full moon?"
Tyler sighs, "Nine days."
He leans back over and the cave once again fills with the sound of steel against steel. Caroline winces at the noise, like he's taking the hammer straight to her temple. His senses are strong, stronger than any human, and she doesn't know how he'd compare to hers, but she knows it has to bother his hearing just as much. He's using four five-inch steel stakes in each of the four plates. When he's got the first one done, he reattaches the manacles and gives an experimental tug. They clang like ghost stories, but she thinks he may hold for a bit longer this time around.
"I thought Elena was dating Stefan."
Caroline glances up and shrugs. "I thought so too. I guess not now. I don't even know where he disappeared off too."
"Maybe he went after them." Tyler shrugs and gives a non-committal scoff at her glare. "It's what I'd do if the girl I thought I loved ran off with some other dude."
"Would you really?" She's never pegged him for the type, and his comment is near romantic, not that she likes that sort of thing. "But I don't know. I guess Stefan probably went after them. Not like there's anything he can do about it. Damon's probably already turned her."
Tyler makes a face. "Why the hell would anybody want to be a freakin' vampire?"
"Well, why the hell would anybody want to be a stinky werewolf?"
The look that crosses his face makes her feel guilty. He didn't mean it that way, didn't mean to insult her, and she should have known that. Lately, he's the only person who makes her feel even a trace of the humanity that's left inside her. Stefan told her about the switch, and in the beginning, she was half tempted to flip it. The idea of feeling no pain, no guilt, no remorse—it's heaven smack dab in hell. But she couldn't bring herself to, and it's these moments that make her wish she had the courage to decide not to care anymore.
"Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry." He's cried in front of her too many times now, and she doesn't want to be the cause of another waterworks session. She likes her men strong and manly, but when he's not The Wolf, he's still just a boy. Caroline sinks from her rock shelf to the ground in front of him and crouches, reaching out a hand to him. "I know you didn't mean it. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped."
He leans his cheek into her palm and covers it with his own hand. "Just forget about it." Then he's backing away and getting to his feet, putting space between them again.
Just when she thinks she's breaking him down, she adds another brick to the wall.
"What did Bonnie say?" says Tyler eventually, after his drinks from his own water bottle and finally glances back at her. She's sitting on the dirt floor and can't bring herself to care if she's ruining $120 jeans. "To make you start thinking? What did she say?"
Should she tell him? Conjure up all the memories of the times she's spent with the Gilbert girl and a 146-year-old vampire—both in the dark and out? Caroline sighs. What could it hurt? "That I was blind. And that Damon's in love with Elena. And that she cares for him too."
Tyler's brows furrow, shooting her a puzzled, not entirely confused look. "Huh. Do you believe her?"
"I, I—I don't know."
Tyler stretches and cracks about forty-seven different bones in his back, or at least it sounds that way, then sits down directly in front of her. He folds his legs Indian-style and balances his chin against the knuckles of his left hand, elbow on his thigh. His knee is less than six inches from her own, and she can feel the heat he generates. With his right, he reaches out and rests just his fingertips against the outside of her knee. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Caroline doesn't need to breath anymore, but she still does out of habit, and it's catching right here—because even the lightest touch is like fire against her room-temperature flesh.
"Why would you want to listen to me talk about it?"
He shrugs, pinky slipping half an inch along her covered skin. "Why would you want to spend your day watching me hammer steel plates to the floor of a cave?" His smile is hesitant, but it sends shivers down her spine. It's a tingle she hasn't felt before. He coughs lightly, glancing away, and she remembers she's been staring. "So… Which one of you met him first?"
"I'm assuming she did," admits Caroline, biting her lip as she thinks. "She knew who he was when he dropped me off at cheerleading practice that one time." She sighs. "She told me he was bad news and she didn't think that I should be with him. But that doesn't prove she loved him—just the opposite!"
"You think she was jealous?" When she glares, he backtracks, "Okay, well, that was just in the beginning. How often were they around each other? Were they alone? How would you describe the way they acted around each other?"
Caroline's head slowly tilts to the side as she meets his eyes, curious expression on her face. Tyler flushes and tugs his hand away. "What? I've spent years listening to you girls talk. Don't expect me to paint your toenails and offer to cry with you over that Notebook movie, but it's hard not to pick up on some things. And, well, sometimes I watch those crime-psych shows when I get drunk."
She lets out a breathy laugh and shakes her head. "Uhm, yeah, they hung out a lot. He's Stefan's brother—plus they were trying to keep him from opening up the tomb—"
"The ancient vampire one, right?"
"Yeah, that one. Obviously, I didn't know that until more recently. Bonnie knew all along, but I kind of got left out of the loop."
"They were trying to protect you."
She hates to admit that he's right. "Oh whatever. I know she skipped school one day a couple of months ago because Damon dragged her off to Atlanta for the day. Jenna was furious about that. I know that Stefan had some trouble with blood and her and Damon helped him through it. When Stefan got stuck in the tomb with Katherine, Elena and Rose went to find Rose's one friend—and Damon went and brought her back."
Tyler shrugs. "Well, that's sort of compelling."
"But she hated him when Katherine came back—he snapped Jeremy's neck!" She's using her hands, gesturing wildly with one and the other tangling, tightly gripping her hair. "And when she found out that he was the one that turned her mom, she was pretty angry. There was something about Bonnie in there too, and she pretty much hated him when he was using me."
"They're a soap-opera drama, is what you're saying."
"Pretty much." Tyler's eyes are too dark, much too focused on her face, and if she could flush—she would. She distracts herself by glancing at her cell phone and then jumping to her feet. His head cranes backwards. "I'm… I'm sorry, it's late. I'm supposed to stop by Ele—Jenna's and tell her if I'd heard anything. I don't want to stop over too late."
Tyler's nodding, toying with the water bottle in his hands, not looking at her now. "Yeah, yeah, I got it."
I'm going to regret this… Caroline drops back to her knees. She slides one hand against his face and uses the fingers of her other to raise his head again. "Thank you." They're trembling, these parts that touch and for the life of her, she can't tell if it's her or him. But he's warm and there is something about him that won't let her just leave him like this—confused and alone, broken on the floor of his self-built prison. "And honestly, I don't know if there's any place I'd rather be at than here with you."
She leans in and presses her lips against his forehead, and then she's gone.