[big bang] with teeth sharper and blood hotter: PART II
Title: with teeth sharper and blood hotter (i’ll return someday)
Author: crickets
Artist: gigglemonster and found HERE!
Word Count: 12,300
Rating: r
Characters/Pairings: caroline/stefan/tyler (others/mentioned: ensemble, bonnie, matt, elena/stefan, tyler/matt, caroline/matt, tyler/vicki, damon/stefan, damon/elena)
Summary: Stefan escapes from Klaus and returns to Mystic Falls. He is followed by the hybrid, and the town pays for his mistake. Mystic Falls is abandoned. Stefan embarks with Caroline and Tyler. On the road and off, we follow the threesome for the next decade.
Beta Readers: kmousie (grammar/usage/errors/+) & ozmissage (continuity/story/canon/+)'
Written For: tvd_bigbang
Link to art: VIDEO + ART
accompaniment
Morning Fog (Interlude) | Danger Mouse/Daniele Luppi
For You | Angus & Julia Stone
Blue Jeans | Lana Del Rey
The Violet Hour | The Civil Wars
Thriller | Imogen Heap
Beautiful Kate (Goodbye) | Tex Perkins
FIC ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN
continued from part I
The road doesn’t end for them any time soon, they keep moving from town to town, never staying in one place too long, and rarely sleeping in separate beds.
The decision to stay together is as easy as looking at Caroline’s face at the open suggestion of anything else.
If there is any thought of jealousy, or separating, or any other alternative, it is squashed immediately by the knowledge of how much she needs them both.
“Never leave me,” she says, one night, her mouth at Tyler’s neck, Stefan’s hands at her waist.
Never.
-
Sharing comes naturally.
It’s as though they’ve been doing it forever, like there’s nothing else that makes sense.
One autumn night, at a hotel in Montreal, Caroline drifts off early and neither of them can get to sleep. They fuck against the wet shower wall, Stefan pressing into Tyler, the shower head turned off.
After, still wide awake, they drink Tyler’s favorite cheap beer and sit out on the balcony, watching Caroline through the window.
“I can’t decide if I should wake her up or let her sleep,” Tyler says. And the truth is, on those nights when they can’t sleep, they always want to wake her up.
But they never do.
Stefan grins. “Let her sleep,” he says.
-
Caroline still craves human food.
The thing she hates most about not staying put is that they can’t always cook. The flavors are richer, taste better, and are more distinct now that she’s a vampire.
When they can, they stay in a place with a proper stove and a fridge, and Caroline cooks more food than the three of them would ever be able to eat before it spoils. Stefan is the better cook, but he humors her, letting her compel the local grocer into giving her whatever she wants from the shelf and not lifting a finger to help.
Tyler is in heaven, the only one among them who still has a physical need for this type of sustenance. On one occasion, he protests loudly that they haven’t had enough red meat lately.
Stefan watches the two of them, bickering playfully over a sink full of plastic hotel dishes, and thinks that they really would do just fine without him.
Caroline turns, casting a glance in his direction. “What are you thinking?” she asks.
“Nothing,” Stefan lies.
“Well, get over here,” she tells him, walking over to where he sits and reaching out a wet hand. “We need someone to put away.”
Stefan grabs her hand and lets her drag him to the sink.
-
When Stefan finally feels safe enough to settle down, they pick a place in Vermont. It’s secluded enough to give them their privacy, and yet close enough to the main roads to make any fast escape necessary.
Tyler swims every night in the days leading up to and following the full moon. He does so even in winter if the lake isn’t yet frozen over. He tells Stefan it’s because his skin is so hot, he can’t take it. The more he learns to control himself when he changes, the more angered the wolf within him becomes. It is not the first or the last time he will speak of this duality, the idea that his wolf is a separate part of him, and it fascinates Stefan.
Caroline and Stefan sit on the dock most nights while he swims. If it’s not too cold, they will swim with him, or simply dangle their legs over the edge and into the water. On the really frigid days, Tyler will jump onto the dock to steal a wet, cold kiss from each of them before diving back into the water. Caroline pouts, and Stefan just laughs.
One particularly warm summer day, Tyler tells them about his older brother who died. Caroline stops reading her magazine from atop her towel and listens to him talk.
“You had a brother?” Caroline asks. “How did I not know this?”
Tyler nods. “It was a long time ago,” he says. “Jackson Lockwood.”
A memory hits Caroline. “Jackson was a Lockwood? I…” she trails off. “He was so different. I had no idea. I was just a kid then.”
Tyler tells his brother’s tale, how he drowned trying to save his best friend on a camping trip one summer. “The kid was panicked and he struggled. He pulled Jackson under with him. By the time the life guard swam out there, they were both gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Stefan says, thinking of his own brother in that moment.
Tyler remembers thinking the world of his brother, but knowing, even back then, that they really were nothing alike. He thinks maybe that’s why his dad was always so hard on him, because Jackson had been his father’s favorite, and Tyler never quite lived up to that standard.
Caroline kisses him before he dives back into the water.
They pass the time by playing questions, a game that Stefan teaches them. It becomes a favorite on the dock. Usually they play it for fun, but sometimes they play it when it’s easier than the real answers.
This time, Caroline starts. “When will he stop needing this?”
Stefan kisses her shoulder. “Don’t you think he’ll stop when he’s ready?”
“Do you suppose this is about his brother?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”‘
Later, after Tyler has rejoined them on the dock and they have exhausted all manner of topics (and Caroline has won the game two times already), with all three of them lying across Caroline’s oversized towel, she asks, “Do you love me?”
“Is there any doubt?” both of them respond in unison. This one is not exactly fair, as it is an oft-asked question and a categorically rehearsed response.
It is the biggest question of all that always stops the game, and all of them have asked and answered it at some point.
“How long will this last?”
“Forever.”
Regardless of asker or answerer, the answer is always forever.
-
Bonnie shows up on an overcast fall afternoon that reminds Caroline of her old school days.
There’s the scent of dead leaves and possibility in the air, and suddenly there she is, in the middle of the farmer’s market and six months pregnant.
Caroline doesn’t ask how Bonnie got there, though she is pretty sure that magic was involved. Instead, she puts her hand on her friend’s belly to feel the child growing inside.
“Jeremy?” Caroline asks, and she is struck in that moment by how grown up her friend looks.
Bonnie shakes her head. “That was high school,” she shrugs. “A lot can happen in six years.”
Caroline nods, but the truth is she can hardly comprehend what Bonnie is saying. In her world, time stands still. In Bonnie’s, everything has changed. Caroline knows they set up a safe haven, a place where the people who escaped from Mystic Falls could be protected by the magic of the witches who keep it, but the truth is that the friends have lost touch over the years.
They don’t talk about Elena. Caroline has known for a while that Elena chose to turn, to become like her and Stefan. Bonnie never talked about why, but Caroline doesn’t have to ask to know that. And she also knows that Elena never understood this thing with the three of them. She remembers receiving a post card in the mail one day - with no return address like always - and all it had said was: Is it true?
Caroline never wrote back.
She didn’t have to.
But her friend isn’t there to catch up, Caroline knows that much. And when she brings her back to the house, Bonnie tells Tyler about his mother.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “No one in the compound even knew she was sick.” She hands Tyler a silver locket, a keepsake from his mother. He takes it and leaves the room.
When Caroline says goodbye to Bonnie, the two hug, and Caroline gets the distinct feeling it will be the last time.
-
Tyler swims for hours that night.
Caroline and Stefan wait for him up at the house instead of in their usual spot down by the water.
When he returns to the house, he is out of breath, sopping wet, and he kisses Caroline hard, and then Stefan.
“Promise me,” he says, red rims around his eyes. “Promise me we’ll never live like that, like fucking rats in a cage.”
Stefan grips Tyler by the neck. “I promise.” He looks at Caroline, and she places her hand on his.
“We promise,” she says.
-
One spring, they buy an old house in Louisiana that Stefan has lived in before.
Caroline loves its endless hallways and turn-of-the-century architecture, and she keeps making Lestat jokes, but Tyler whispers Louis into Stefan’s ear whenever he moves inside him, and he thinks that much should be obvious to Caroline.
They fuck in every room in the house, and it’s so goddamn hot that there just isn’t anything else to do to forget the heat. Caroline watches the two of them move against each other, hips against hips. She lets Stefan draw her and Tyler, a hobby he picked up at the end of their stay in Vermont, and one which Tyler had encouraged. They hang the sketches, no matter how pornographic, all around the house.
“It’s not like we get any visitors anyway,” Caroline reasons, and Tyler just laughs.
Stefan tells ghost stories. He lived in the house from ’63 to ’64, and there had been an apparition that would visit him at night.
“Was she naked?” Tyler asks.
Caroline punches him in the shoulder. “Don’t be such a guy!”
“What?” Tyler protests. “It’s a legitimate question!”
Beside them on the bed, Stefan laughs. “Only sometimes,” he says, by way of humoring Tyler.
“See?!” He sticks his tongue out at Caroline.
She rolls her eyes at him. “Continue, please,” she says to Stefan. “Ignore the overgrown child to my left and finish your story.”
Stefan tells them how she used to float up and down these very halls, and even on occasions in this very bedroom. Caroline shivers, and Tyler instinctively looks to the door. Stefan swears that she would hum, up and down the halls each night. Sometimes she would move things or rearrange furniture when he wasn’t home.
At the time, Stefan blamed Damon, who was known to run with witches. In the ’50s, Sheila Bennett had shown Stefan the whimsical side of magic, and he wouldn’t put it past his brother to go to great lengths to get under his skin.
Later, after he left the house and went off to Europe with Lexi, he found out that Damon had been out of the country at the time.
“So she was real after all,” Tyler says.
Stefan shrugs. “I think so,” he reasons. “I mean, I can’t think of any other explanation. I know that spirits exist, and we all know Bonnie made contact with the witches from Mystic Falls, but a haunting is something else entirely. And she’s the only one of her kind I’ve ever come across.”
“Where do you think she went?” Caroline asks.
“Maybe she finally went home.”
Caroline doesn’t ask where that might be, only curls closer to Stefan and pulls Tyler’s arm tighter around her middle.
-
They only go to the west coast once.
Caroline wants to see the Hollywood sign and watch the sunset on the beach. Stefan protests, as he has no patience for movie stars and high fashion, but Tyler manages to convince him.
They’re there only one week. Their stay is interrupted on the night of the full moon, when Tyler breaks loose and almost kills Caroline before Stefan manages to tranquilize him with a wolfsbane-laced dart.
They never go back.
-
After Hollywood, they have better luck in New York.
Tyler immediately feels at home in the city, and in those first few months he often leaves Caroline and Stefan alone at night to wander the streets.
Stefan tells them stories about himself and Lexi, how they practically lived at the hotel Chelsea for several stints in the sixties and seventies. He tells them about all the famous people they met and compelled, about how Lexi was almost a Chelsea Girl and how later they were there when Sid killed Nancy.
Caroline insists that they rent out the same room where Stefan and Lexi stayed. They start drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. It comes naturally, but Caroline thinks they’re subconsciously trying to recreate that bygone era. Tyler draws the line at accompanying Caroline to poetry readings, and Stefan agrees.
Caroline takes photographs of the city and of her companions. Stefan borrows them and turns them into paintings. Tyler sleeps too much during the day and still wanders the streets after nightfall, but not as often as in the beginning.
Eventually, they each take their own lovers.
Caroline meets a Brazilian intern named Leda at an art gallery. Leda is unlike anyone that Caroline has ever known and she relishes in the idea of Caroline, Tyler, and Stefan all together: sharing a life, sharing their bed. Caroline likes to listen to Leda marvel at their life in her native tongue. She doesn’t understand the words, but she feels their meaning deep in her belly.
Caroline knows that Leda would like to join them, but the truth about what they are is something that Leda will never know and that Caroline would never think to burden her with. Instead, she teaches Leda how to take photographs, a practice which Leda insists she has always been terrible at. Caroline disagrees, and she does so vehemently in a bastardized rudimentary version of Portuguese, which Leda has been helping her to perfect.
Eventually Caroline gives up and, gesturing at Leda’s work splayed out on the floor, simply says, “belo.”
Before Leda goes back to Brazil, she makes Caroline promise that the three of them will come to visit her.
Someday.
Tyler takes up with a hometown girl from Queens, who, as it turns out, has no patience at all for their Three’s Company living arrangements. But Penelope is gorgeous, and Stefan and Caroline can tell that Tyler is taken with her. However, it isn’t long until she tries to convince him to move in with her and starts telling him that she’s in love.
He lets Caroline compel her after an evening of too much wine and bread. She’s already sleepy and complacent and it feels less like the betrayal that it is. Caroline crawls into the oversized arm chair with Tyler after she sends Penelope home, assures him that the girl will never remember so much as his name.
“Like you never existed…” she trails off, and Tyler kisses her.
They make love on the floor before Stefan comes home.
That night, when he returns, the vampire can sense something is off, and he sleeps out on the balcony, letting the two of them have the bed until the city sounds drive him inside and into their warm arms.
Stefan, of course, is more discrete about his exploits. Some nights he goes out, coming back at odd hours and smelling of sex, sometimes even blood.
This is all that they know, and all that they ask.
He’s always been the most secretive of the three of them, the one to keep things to himself. It’s a part of him they have come to understand well over the years. Tyler will often pounce on him when he enters the room, pinning him against the wall and pressing his nose to his neck, drinking in his scent, grinding their hips together.
“Come,” Caroline will usually say, and reach her hands out to them, dreamy-eyed and pink-lipped.
They always comply.
One evening Caroline spies Stefan kissing a man in the alleyway on her way home.
Later, she remarks to Tyler just how much the stranger had looked like Damon.
-
Stefan is always talking about how time moves in a circle. The others are still relatively young and to them, immortality is still something that they can’t fully grasp. It hangs in the air, existing in the orbit around them, but it does not yet consume them in the way that it consumes Stefan.
“Time dooms us to make the same mistakes over and over.” Stefan often says things like this, and Caroline dismisses them. But then she remembers the man in the alley, and she thinks that Stefan might be right in some ways.
“We’re not a mistake, are we?” Caroline draws circles on Tyler’s back with her fingers, her chin propped on her elbow. The wolf sleeps soundly beside them, oblivious to the conversation and the world.
Stefan catches her eye, and Caroline knows the answer already. “Never,” he says with an ease that has only come once or twice before in his long life.
After a long while, Stefan says, “Sometimes I just wish I could do it all over.”
“What?” Caroline asks.
He looks at her, his answer simple.
“Life.”
-
Caroline only leaves them once.
She makes up some story about where she’s going and when she’ll be back and then she buys a one-way ticket to a city she’s never heard of. For six hours on the train she watches a family of five laugh and play games, tease each other and take care of each other. The mother, a woman with kind eyes and her hair pulled back carelessly, kisses each of her three children on the forehead before they fall asleep.
Caroline will never have a family, and the only family she has is a six-hour ride away and getting further by the minute.
She gets off at the next stop and boards the first train back.
When she returns to their apartment in the small sleepy, New Hampshire town they’ve called home for the past six months, she finds the two of them asleep, curled against one another in the bed.
Caroline kicks off her shoes, whispering, “I’m home.”
They will never know she even left.
-
“Where do you think we should go next?” Tyler asks Caroline on a sleepy morning.
Caroline, who is unaware that the game has begun, responds naturally, shrugging. “Where do you think we should go?”
“Repetition,” he teases, and Caroline groans.
Stefan walks into the room. “Questions?” he asks, having heard them from the kitchen.
“Are you always such a cheat?” Caroline retorts, sticking her tongue out at Tyler. He puts his hand over her mouth, and her tongue darts back in, but only momentarily. She sticks it back out again, wetting his palm where it covers her lips.
“Ew?” he says, allowing the sound to rise so that it sounds like a question, when in fact, it is not.
“Statement.” She calls him on it.
“Why should I answer you, when you still haven’t answered me?” he recovers quickly.
Caroline takes a moment to consider his original query, knowing that hesitation is also against the rules, but not seeming to care. “Can’t you just decide? Why do I have to do it?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Tyler grins and kisses her shoulder.
“Shouldn’t we figure this out along the way?” Stefan plops himself down on the end of the bed, stretching over their feet and legs.
“But isn’t that the way we’ve always done it?” It’s Caroline this time, who slides her foot from underneath Stefan and kicks him gently on the side of the head.
“Is there any reason to change that now?” Stefan responds.
“Whose hand is that?” Tyler interjects, and both Caroline and Stefan look at each other.
“Can’t you figure it out?” Caroline grins, her hand joining Stefan’s at Tyler’s thigh.
Tyler squirms a little when their cool hands slide a little higher. “Are you two ever going to stop torturing me?”
“Never,” they say in unison.
-
When they finally leave New England, Stefan finds himself traveling familiar southern roads.
They pass a sign for Mystic Falls, and he looks to the passenger seat to find Caroline eyeing him. Tyler, relaxed in the back seat, is doing the same. Caroline nods, a sideways smile just barely hidden from view. Tyler just shrugs and opens his hands, consenting in his own way.
The town is just as empty as when they left it, and terribly overgrown. A decade or so goes by, and nature has taken her back.
They return to the boarding house, which looks almost just as trimmed and landscaped as it had been on the day they left.
“Damon,” Stefan offers by way of explanation. And it’s obvious that his brother has been back more than once. But when they inspect the house, and note the thickness of the dust on every surface, it’s clear that it’s been a while since his last visit.
Tyler immediately makes his way to Damon’s liquor cabinet, which, as it turns out, is fully stocked.
“We are definitely staying.”
-
Tyler and Stefan find Caroline asleep in his bed.
They have slept in many beds, and in many towns, but none have been quite as good as this one on that first night with all three of them together.
The two of them stand at the doorway, watching her sleep, as they have done on many occasions.
“God, she’s beautiful,” Stefan says. He looks at Tyler, but this time Tyler is looking at him.
They kiss, slow and easy, like coming home, and when they’re both breathless and feeling just as tired as their travel mate, they crawl into the bed with her to sleep.
In the morning, Caroline wakes, sandwiched between the two of them. She rouses Stefan first, with a kiss, and then Tyler in the same manner. There is nothing more she would like to do right now than christen this new bed as their own. She is quite aware that Stefan has many memories of his own in this room and that it is time to give him a new one.
Stefan slides his hand up her thigh, stopping when he meets her white cotton panties.
Tyler watches them, and Caroline closes her eyes when Stefan slips two fingers underneath the elastic.
Tyler kisses her, urges her to open her eyes. “Caroline,” he says, his voice thick with sex. “Look at me.”
She fixes her gaze on him, meeting Tyler’s eyes as Stefan brings her over with just the touch of his fingers. She comes, a gasp at the back of her throat and Tyler’s lips grazing hers.
-
Later, with his two companions sleeping soundly, Stefan escapes into the garden. He wanders along the stone walls and through the woods out back, and he finds himself much farther from the house than he anticipated.
He smells the hybrid first.
Before Stefan has a chance to react, Klaus has his hands on him and presses him against the rough bark of a tree, his elbow at the back of Stefan’s neck, lips grazing against his ear.
“Have you ever drained a werewolf completely?” Klaus asks him, craning around so that he can fix his eyes on Stefan’s, trapping him in his gaze.
Stefan pleads with him. “I’ll go with you. Just leave them here. You don’t have to do this.”
“Aren’t you supposed to answer in a question, pet?” Klaus’ grip tightens, and all the air goes out of Stefan’s lungs. He’s been watching them this whole time. Of course he has.
“No,” Stefan mutters.
“Yes,” Klaus answers, a grin spreading across his oddly cherub-like face. “Now you’re going to go in there, and you’re going to be very, very, hungry…”
-
Caroline kisses him when he walks into the room. “There you are,” she says. “We were just missing you.”
Stefan grabs her by the shoulders and pulls back. He leans in, drags his tongue across her lips in an obscene fashion. “I’m hungry.” Caroline’s eyes snap up, studying him, and she can see what she had missed before.
She calls Tyler’s name, a warning, and struggles against the vampire who shoves her hard and pins her to the wall with a broken chair leg, plunging it through her shoulder and the wall behind her, one hand squeezing her neck tightly.
Tyler jumps up, but as Stefan stands between him and the doorway, there isn’t anywhere for him to go.
Caroline struggles. “Stefan,” she gasps. “Listen to me, don’t do this. I know you’re still in there.”
It’s useless. Klaus’s compulsion is potent, and Stefan is on Tyler in an instant, his elbow against Tyler’s throat, trapping him against a book case. “Don’t be afraid,” Stefan whispers. His eyes go red and he sinks his fangs into the werewolf’s neck before Tyler’s legs give out and the two of them go crashing to the floor.
He drinks slowly, and Caroline struggles against the wall, unable to free herself from where Stefan has lodged the wooden stake. The sound of Tyler fighting, gasping for air and groaning in pain, kicking his feet against the floor as Stefan drinks from him, is almost more than she can bear. “No, no, no, no!” she cries, the scent of blood filling her nostrils. She calls both of their names, and kicks against the wall to no avail. “Fuck!”
She can tell that Tyler is growing weak, and he stops moving, the sounds of his struggles going muted. Stefan’s soft, hoarse moans of pleasure, and the wet, sucking sound of him feeding, rise to the surface before giving way to a low growl. He sits up on his knees and leans back, a scream tearing from the back of his throat. He doubles over. Tyler, still alive, and able to heal quickly now that he is not being drained dry, scampers back, letting Stefan fall to the floor, writhing in pain.
“Tyler!” Caroline reaches out to him and he is there in a flash, yanking the stake from the wall and freeing her.
She kneels over Stefan, turning him over to find that he is barely breathing.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps for breath, reaches out to touch her face, leaving bloody fingerprints upon her cheek. “I’m sorry.”
-
If Klaus is still lurking, he has made himself scarce for the time being.
They put Stefan into the bed, and he protests. “Leave me,” he says. “He’ll be back.”
Caroline watches as the color drains from his face, tucks the blanket under his chin, and she’s never been more certain that Klaus is done with Stefan.
For good.
-
“Is he dying?” Tyler finds her in the parlor.
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s like he’s been poisoned. Like he’s been bitten.”
Tyler’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he offers. “Both of you have fed from me before.”
“Not that much,” Caroline reasons. “A little foreplay here and there, but never that much.”
Tyler stands, shaking his head, unwilling to believe that his blood could be that deadly.
“Tyler, he almost killed you, almost drained you completely. The fact is, we don’t have any idea what that could do to a vampire, or to a werewolf for that matter. Before he stopped, before he got sick, you stopped moving and… I couldn’t even hear your heart beat.” She reaches up, slides her hands from his chest to his neck and looks into his eyes. “I thought you were dead.”
Tyler presses his forehead to hers. “Me too,” he agrees. “So what? Is this is like some kind of natural werewolf defense mechanism?”
“I don’t know,” Caroline kisses him.
“If he dies,” Tyler breathes, his eyes closed.
“I know,” Caroline says. “I know.”
-
The two spend the next day and night watching over Stefan. He shivers and then he sweats, he swears at them and then he reaches out for their hands. Stefan vomits up blood, and the two of them take turns cleaning it up. Caroline hunts and brings him animal blood from the forest, but he can’t keep anything down. Tyler even picks apples and other fruits from the trees outside, thinking that maybe human food, anything other than blood, will help.
It doesn’t.
Caroline remembers all of the things that her mother used to say to her when she was sick as a child and she says those things to Stefan now, though she can’t imagine they are of any comfort to him. Tyler sits next to the two of them on the bed, Caroline clutching Stefan in her lap as she sings to him.
The two of them fall asleep to the sound of her song.
-
In the morning, Caroline and Tyler are alone in the bed when they wake up. They find Stefan sitting at his desk poring over his old journals, light filtering through the curtains. Caroline goes to him, touches his face, and can see that his skin is back to its usual pallor. Tyler kneels and puts a hand on his neck, searching his eyes for any sign of compulsion.
They take him to the shower, peeling his clothes from him until he’s naked and standing under a stream of hot water, a bar of soap in hand. Once he’s scrubbed clean and dressed, they immediately discuss leaving, of never coming back, but Stefan agrees with Caroline’s earlier assessment: Klaus won’t be back this time. They should stay.
“I don’t remember much,” he tells them. “Klaus didn’t want me to. But I’m sure he won’t be back this time. I can feel it.”
Caroline swallows hard, remembering how scared she’d been over the past couple of days - for all of them. “I hope you’re right,” she tells him.
“Me too,” he nods. “In the meantime, I seem to remember some fresh blood?”
“In the kitchen,” Tyler tells him. “The fridge.”
Caroline kisses Stefan before he leaves the room and her fingers tangle in his until he slips out of her grasp and into the main hallway.
“I can’t believe it,” Tyler says, running his hand through his hair. “I cannot fucking believe it.”
Caroline looks at the disheveled state of the bed where Tyler sits, to the spot where she was sure she would find Stefan dead in the morning and shakes her head. “I know.”
But then, something at the edge of the desk catches her eye. At the same time, she can hear the front door being opened.
Stefan’s ring.
She runs, Tyler following her, to meet Stefan at the door - to stop him - but it’s too late, he’s already standing in the open threshold, bathed in sunlight.
“How…” the word echoes through the room.
They rush to his side, but when they reach the doorway, Caroline grabs Tyler’s hand tightly, stops him from going after Stefan, who takes another certain step, his face turned toward the sky. “Wait!” she says, her voice betraying a hint of understanding.
“What’s happening?” Tyler asks, looks at her.
“Can’t you smell it?” Caroline says, her voice suddenly flat, calm.
Tyler looks to Stefan and then back to Caroline. “Smell it? Smell what?” he asks. “What are you talking about, Caroline?”
Caroline never takes her eyes from Stefan, and she squeezes Tyler’s hand.
Stefan turns to them, a smile spreading across his lips.
He looks like he might laugh.
Caroline closes her eyes, terrified of what she is about to say.
“He’s human.”
-fin