FF: Forwood (Oil and Water) - update 8/17: p. 5 - Page 3

Chapter 7:

He didn't know what insanity had overtaken him that he had smelled her hair so blatantly.  He even thought that he had said something out loud about it.  He was grateful that she had diffused the situation as she had done.  He didn't want to see her in that way.  Equating women with sex came easily to him.  Disturbingly easily.  Otherwise, he wouldn't have made the douche-bag move to make out with his best friend's mother.  A piercing pain shot through his head as soon as he thought of that night.  He clutched the sides of his forehead as the pain made him see stars.

Caroline stopped talking and rushed over to his side.

"Tyler.  Tyler! What's wrong?"  Her touch against his arms felt strange, as if there was a tiny vacuum of space just around where she fingers connected with his that felt light.  On instinct, he brought her fingers up to the side of his forehead and the pain diffused slowly.

What the hell?

He closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the confusion on her face or explain what he was doing.  He didn't know what he was doing.  Did vampires have healing powers?  He didn't know.  She held still without moving, letting him press her fingers deeply into his head.  When the pain disappeared entirely, he opened his eyes.

She raised an eyebrow in question while her eyes still showed concern.

Had she always been like this?  He wondered now.  He had never met anyone as compassionate.  Why had he never noticed before?

"Sorry.  I just had this sudden splitting pain inside my head.  It's gone now."  He muttered as he walked away from the counter and towards the oven.  "It's probably because I am hungry enough to eat a whole cow.  When is this going to be ready, Forbes?"

She didn't answer him right away and he surreptitiously watched her reflection on the surface of the microwave.  She was watching him, concern still evident in her eyes and he felt a sudden frustration build inside him.

"I don't want your pity, Forbes.  If you are going to give me that look every time I act strange, I can take it from here.  I will see you in school tomorrow."

He saw her eyebrow shoot up in agitation and felt relieved immediately. 

"This is not pity, you jackass.  This is my new and improved version of is-he-trying-to-pull-one-over-me-in-new-werewolf-fashion look."

He laughed as he grabbed the oven door handle and she did her vampire run-at-the-speed-of-light-trick and came to slam the door.

"You're going to let the heat escape." She crossed her hands across her waist as her whole body blocked him from making another heat-escape attempt.

"I have to find uncle Mason."  he said suddenly.

She was taken aback by the abrupt switch in topic and looked towards the overhead cupboards, opening them to take out plates. 

"Um… Yes, yes, we do."  she said as she took the plates to the counter.

"Are there others like you?  Who made you?  How do you know about me?"  he asked, all the questions that had been floating through his head for the past three days spilling out all at once.

He saw her movements slow and she paused to take a deep breath before turning around to face him.

"It's a long story…"  she said finally.

"I have time."  He replied, walking towards her.

The timer beeper just then and she turned towards the oven in relief and walked to get their dinner.

"My car broke down in the woods around your family's cellar one evening and I roamed around without cell reception until it was nightfall."

She turned around to face him.  "I was bitten and changed that night."  She said with uncharacteristic brevity.

He walked to her, watching her fluttering eyes and remarked curiously, "I thought vampires couldn't walk in the sun."

She gave a nervous laugh and looked down to twist one of her rings as she said, "Ah… just a myth."

"What happened to the vampire who turned you?"  he was almost upon her.

"It left town.  This was just for its brief amusement."  She picked up the dishtowel hanging over the over handle and fidgeted with it.

"You told me that you killed someone before."   He said once he stopped near her.

She nodded and turned away from him, wiping a nonexistent speck on the counter.

"Who?" he asked.

She kept her eyes lowered and it was after a few moments that she answered, "I don't know.  She may have been someone's mother, or sister, or wife, or daughter… I don't know."

Her voice broke at the end and he suddenly felt contrite for grilling her like this. 

He leaned over her shoulder to look at the sizzling lasagna.

"Let's eat. I am ravenous."

She looked up, caught off-guard again by the sudden change in topic.

"If you make me wait anymore Forbes, I swear, I will eat this whole tray with my claws like the savage animal that I apparently am."  He put his hands around so that she could see all ten of his wiggling fingers for effect.

She smiled then, and for the second time that day, he felt unexpectedly relieved.

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Chapter 8:

Return to high-school was a novel experience, which he found to be somewhat of an oxymoron. Everything was the same, and yet everything was different. Caroline was the only thing steady in his life; by no fault of her own, she had become his anchor. Especially as life as he knew it came to be ruled by what he termed - during a particularly nerdy moment - H to the power of 4.

Hunger was ever-present. From the moment he woke, it followed him with the tenacity of a hound biting at the heels until abruptly letting go once the nightmares of REM sleep took over.

Hatred for everything about himself and his life before the last full moon was next on the list. It had managed to permeate every particle of his consciousness to a degree that resisting the urge to harm himself in some fashion had become a full-time job. It was a sordid punishment for having inhuman strength. The one thing that prevented him from acting on any self-mutilating impulses was the fact that any time he thought of his innumerable sins from the seventeen years that he had taken to accumulate them, the piercing pain started in his head almost immediately. The worse the shit that he had done, the harsher the pain. No amount of the extra-strength variety of acetaminophen or aspirin made a dent in the pain. Only Caroline's touch helped. He tried not to make it obvious, but she must wonder at how often he made her feel his forehead at the pretense of checking whether he was coming down with a fever so that he could leave school. He could only pull that off for a few seconds, but it was enough to dull the pain so that it no longer blinded his vision.

Heuristic was the way in which his new life worked. Everything was trial and error. How he could manage his hunger; how he could manage his anger; and how he could manage… other powerful drives that he had… There were no books, no guidelines, no nothing that he had looked through that gave him any reliable information aside from uncle Mason's journal of that night. But that journal didn't chronicle anything except Hell, which he was mightily blessed to have been through himself and cared not to re-experience even through light reading. There was a veritable black hole of information on the internet; some of it was true, but most of it, there was no way for him to verify. One thing that he had read that stuck with him was that werewolves were prone to long periods of melancholy and depression from everything they did during their time as wolves. From his limited experience thus far, it was not just from the times when they ran as wolves, but from every other time as long as they lived… He suffered no melancholic depression, merely an unremitting self-loathing – which he would not buy as a sign of depression – and of course, the head-splitting migraines.

And last, but not least… and this was the most alarming H of all, especially as it managed to co-exist in bizarre harmony with all the other H's, just minding its own business.  He was horny almost every moment of his waking hours… and a generous number of the nocturnal hours too… he hadn't had this level of… physical readiness… since the early days of puberty. The only time the need for sex receded was when he would have his migraines. And thus it had become necessary to invoke memories of all the shit that he had done to force a raging migraine on himself to lessen the threat of a raging erection while in public.

The sheer amount of mental power required to balance the four H's made him think that his brain might spontaneously combust before long. However, weeks passed and it remained intact, not even one nerve cell having the courtesy to rupture and put him out of his misery.

Instead, what had happened was that he had become a highly irate shit-head who had to control the urge to not bark out obscenities at anything that annoyed him… which was everything…

Except Caroline…

Chapter 9:

She knew he hid most of what he was going through from her.  He couldn't abide to be around anyone for more than ten minutes.  Girls were the worst for him, she had noticed.  In fact, he quite actively avoided the cheerleaders, which was an incredible feat given his now even more improved athletic prowess and tireless energy.  And his aloofness and constantly preoccupied look only served to make girls flock to him like moths to flame despite – or maybe because of – his reputation as a dickhead.

He only had three classes with her, which made it all the more odd to everyone else that he got a hall pass at least once every period to come find her.  Usually, it was under the pretense that he was falling sick.  Somehow she had become his thermometer.  He often held her palm over his forehead and insisted that she needed to hold it there for at least twenty seconds to properly assess his elevated temperature because in his words, "wolves tend to run hot anyways…"  She indulged him in this bizarre routine only because she suspected that something else was going on that he just didn't want to tell her.

Even though Stefan, Elena, Damon, and Bonnie knew about him, they obviously tried not to let him know.  Matt, on the other hand, did not know and he was the one who was having the most difficult time.  It didn't help that aside from playing ball, Tyler didn't spend too much time with him.  And Tyler's preference for her above everyone else was starting to become a bit obvious.  She didn't have the heart to tell Tyler that people were starting to think that they were an item.  He so clearly needed a friend and treated her as nothing but.  Matt was starting to get annoyed with all the talk, particularly as Tyler seemed to not even know that there was anything wrong with the amount of attention he needed from her or gave to her. 

This morning had been particularly bad because Tyler had seemed genuinely restless and had found her in a rush and pulled her away from Matt with a brief apology.  He had taken her to the back of the school where there had been no one else and had dropped to his knees, startling her.  For a brief moment, she had seen his eyes turn and had dropped down next to him, frightened.

He hadn't answered her worried questions, but had grabbed and crushed her hands against either side of his head.  She had held still without breathing, terrified without reason that he would turn without a full-moon in full daylight.  But he hadn't.  Within a few minutes, the scrunched up lines of pain on his forehead had eased and the tension in his shoulders had visibly relaxed. 

"Why do you do this?"  she had finally asked.

He had opened his eyes and had been about to speak, but had suddenly looked up behind her.  When she turned around, she had seen Matt standing by the door, watching them. 

"It's not what you think.  I swear to God, man.  I wish I could explain, but I can't."   He had stood up and had started walking backwards, shaking his head and he said in a hoarse voice, "Honest to God.  It's not what you think."

He had turned around and walked away then, leaving her with a mildly irate and surprised Matt. 

"And to think that he had thought you were an insecure, neurotic, bitchy little twit not that long ago."  He had muttered under his breath, not knowing of course that she had freakin' bat ears now.

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When she got home that evening, he was waiting on the porch for her.

She gave him a brief look before unlocking the front door and walking into her house.  Her mother wouldn't be home for several hours yet, which of course he knew well.

He followed her in, surprised at her cool reception.

"What's wrong?  Was Matt angry?  Did you guys fight?"  he asked, standing against the counter while she opened the refrigerator.

She kept him waiting while she drank water before saying with as much nonchalance as she could manage, "No, he was just surprised that the same guy who called me an "insecure, neurotic, bitchy little twit" is now in constant need of my company.   

"What?"  he asked with no evident recollection of his words as she grabbed a container of leftovers and walked to the oven.

"Wait, I called you what?"  he asked again.

"Insecure Neurotic Bitchy Little Twit."  She repeated as she opened the microwave.

He was quiet for a moment and she was overtaken by the need to look back to see what he was doing, but resisted the impulse.

By the time she closed the microwave the turned it on, he was behind her.

"Oh come on Caroline.  It's not like we were close back then.  And I thought it was a publicly acknowledged truth that I was a tool.  Since when do you take those things to heart?" 

"If I am insecure and neurotic, not to mention bitchy, you see how I would find such lovely adjectives hurtful?"  she knew she was being somewhat unreasonable, but what the hell?  He didn't have to be so… mean.

She still didn't turn around, but then thought that she should have, because he moved in closer to her and placed his hands on either side of her and leaned in even though no part of his body touched hers.  "I was an asshole.  I am sorry."  He said plainly and honestly before standing there patiently, waiting for her response.

She felt as if it would have been less intimate if he had touched her.  This level of proximity was generating a sort of humming in the tiny space that separated their bodies that she found distracting.

"Yes, alright."  She said quickly, hoping he would move away.

There was an infinitesimal delay before he did.  And it was enough to convince her that she shouldn't spend so much time alone with him.

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Originally posted by: ninand

I have to say, this is one vampire-wolf story I am enjoying to the hilt... the best part being that I do not have to go back to check on the characters for reference..

Your writing  gives me ample insight into what goes into the working of these super human super neurotic creatures and it makes for one very entertaining read..

Though , few parts struck me more than the rest cause I could relate to them- One is the obsessive self analysis that Caroline indulges in..  damn if that isn't an irritant to say the least😆 

and some blew me away completely by the sheer genius with which they were written... The description of the pain Tyler goes through was gripping.. More often than not in dramas/movies even novels, the pain is not as explicitly described , leads one to actually subconsciously underrate or not even notice pain as a deterrent in the ambition to be super human...

how i loved that line-where hes robbed of his voice and  later feels cheated when the scream doesn't to justice to the intensity of the pain he had underwent ..   that was brilliant though I admit to having laughed a bit at his frustration.. 

enjoyed the latest 4 H bit enormously and looking forward to more..

Thanks for the update and for not making me watch the series to get an idea of whats happening.😆

Chapter 9:

She knew he hid most of what he was going through from her.  He couldn't abide to be around anyone for more than ten minutes.  Girls were the worst for him, she had noticed.  In fact, he quite actively avoided the cheerleaders, which was an incredible feat given his now even more improved athletic prowess and tireless energy.  And his aloofness and constantly preoccupied look only served to make girls flock to him like moths to flame despite – or maybe because of – his reputation as a dickhead.

He only had three classes with her, which made it all the more odd to everyone else that he got a hall pass at least once every period to come find her.  Usually, it was under the pretense that he was falling sick.  Somehow she had become his thermometer.  He often held her palm over his forehead and insisted that she needed to hold it there for at least twenty seconds to properly assess his elevated temperature because in his words, "wolves tend to run hot anyways…"  She indulged him in this bizarre routine only because she suspected that something else was going on that he just didn't want to tell her.

Even though Stefan, Elena, Damon, and Bonnie knew about him, they obviously tried not to let him know.  Matt, on the other hand, did not know and he was the one who was having the most difficult time.  It didn't help that aside from playing ball, Tyler didn't spend too much time with him.  And Tyler's preference for her above everyone else was starting to become a bit obvious.  She didn't have the heart to tell Tyler that people were starting to think that they were an item.  He so clearly needed a friend and treated her as nothing but.  Matt was starting to get annoyed with all the talk, particularly as Tyler seemed to not even know that there was anything wrong with the amount of attention he needed from her or gave to her. 

This morning had been particularly bad because Tyler had seemed genuinely restless and had found her in a rush and pulled her away from Matt with a brief apology.  He had taken her to the back of the school where there had been no one else and had dropped to his knees, startling her.  For a brief moment, she had seen his eyes turn and had dropped down next to him, frightened.

He hadn't answered her worried questions, but had grabbed and crushed her hands against either side of his head.  She had held still without breathing, terrified without reason that he would turn without a full-moon in full daylight.  But he hadn't.  Within a few minutes, the scrunched up lines of pain on his forehead had eased and the tension in his shoulders had visibly relaxed. 

"Why do you do this?"  she had finally asked.

He had opened his eyes and had been about to speak, but had suddenly looked up behind her.  When she turned around, she had seen Matt standing by the door, watching them. 

"It's not what you think.  I swear to God, man.  I wish I could explain, but I can't."   He had stood up and had started walking backwards, shaking his head and he said in a hoarse voice, "Honest to God.  It's not what you think."

He had turned around and walked away then, leaving her with a mildly irate and surprised Matt. 

"And to think that he had thought you were an insecure, neurotic, bitchy little twit not that long ago."  He had muttered under his breath, not knowing of course that she had freakin' bat ears now.

                                                                   ------

When she got home that evening, he was waiting on the porch for her.

She gave him a brief look before unlocking the front door and walking into her house.  Her mother wouldn't be home for several hours yet, which of course he knew well.

He followed her in, surprised at her cool reception.

"What's wrong?  Was Matt angry?  Did you guys fight?"  he asked, standing against the counter while she opened the refrigerator.

She kept him waiting while she drank water before saying with as much nonchalance as she could manage, "No, he was just surprised that the same guy who called me an "insecure, neurotic, bitchy little twit" is now in constant need of my company.   

"What?"  he asked with no evident recollection of his words as she grabbed a container of leftovers and walked to the oven.

"Wait, I called you what?"  he asked again.

"Insecure. Neurotic. Bitchy. Little Twit."  She repeated as she opened the microwave.

He was quiet for a moment and she was overtaken by the need to look back to see what he was doing, but resisted the impulse.

By the time she closed the microwave and turned it on, he was behind her.

"Oh come on Caroline.  It's not like we were close back then.  And I thought it was a publicly acknowledged truth that I was a tool.  Since when do you take those things to heart?" 

"If I am insecure and neurotic, not to mention bitchy, you see how I would find such lovely adjectives hurtful?"  she knew she was being somewhat unreasonable, but what the hell?  He didn't have to be so… mean.

She still didn't turn around, but then thought that she should have, because he moved in closer to her and placed his hands on either side of her and leaned in even though no part of his body touched hers.  "I was an asshole.  I am sorry."  He said plainly and honestly before standing there patiently, waiting for her response.

She felt as if it would have been less intimate if he had touched her.  This level of proximity was generating a sort of humming in the tiny space that separated their bodies that she found distracting.

"Yes, alright."  She said quickly, hoping he would move away.

There was an infinitesimal delay before he did.  And it was enough to convince her that she shouldn't spend so much time alone with him.

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Chapter 10:

"What happened to you this morning?"  she asked as she brought a plate piled with food to him.  His appetite had become insatiable nowadays, she had noticed.  He didn't show it to anyone else, but whenever they were alone, he was eating not just his food, but most of hers too.

"Nothing."  He said absently without touching the food as he lay back on the couch, running his hands over his face.

"Tyler!"

He lowered his hands and looked at her.

"Nothing… really." 

He stood up and walked to the window, his food abandoned.  He gave her his back and stood there, looking out at nothing.

She waited him out, knowing that he was more likely to take her question seriously if she wasn't her usual chatty self.

And finally he did, although what he asked startled her enough that she dropped the fork that she had been holding in her hand.

"Is a werewolf bite fatal to a vampire?"  his tone was low and steady as he asked.

He didn't turn around at the clang of the fork, although she was sure that he took it as affirmation.

She walked away from him into the kitchen under the pretense of acquiring a new fork, although even that time wasn't enough to think up a good excuse or answer for his question.

Once she came back with a new fork and resumed her stance, leaning against the side table, she discovered that he was using the same tactic as her.  He was waiting her out.

"Yes." She finally said, quietly.

He slammed a fist against the ledge of the window so hard that she jumped from the memory of her human reflexes. 

"What the hell?"  she was near him in a flash, looking at his now bleeding knuckles.

He did not give the blood or the wound any consideration as he asked again, his voice lower than before.  "When did you know?" 

She hadn't realized that he had been angry all this time.

She started to walk away from him, but he pulled her back in agitation.

"When the hell did you know?"  he was practically yelling now as he forced her against the wall.

"Calm down. Tyler, calm down."  She held a hand against his chest so that he wouldn't ram her against the wall like he had done that first time when he had accused her of being a werewolf and had broken one of her mother's paintings.

"I want an honest answer, Caroline.  Don't f**k around.  When did you know?"  he asked again, backing away a millimeter to appease her.

She found that she couldn't look him in the eye for this answer.  She didn't want it to come across as some martyr mission of hers where she had foolishly put her life – non-life – at risk for someone who wasn't even all that close to her.  That just had teenage drama and angst written all over it.   As if she didn't realize the value of life – even an existence such as hers.

"I knew before, alright.  But it's not like what you think.  I…"  She said quickly and looked up briefly to see his response.  She was alarmed when she saw his eyes turn, the pupils dilating into large dark orbs and the iris turning a dense green and expanding so quickly that the white disappeared completely.  His face contorted in pain as he suddenly clutched his head.  On impulse, she brought up her hands to stroke his forehead.  His eyes opened in surprise and his hands fell away and she moved her palms over to hold them on either side of his head.  His eyes changed back slowly from the beast to Tyler and all the while his gaze was trained on hers. 

She had figured it out over the past two weeks, of course.  She just hadn't wanted to acknowledge it.  For whatever reason, her touch eased his pain; not metaphorically, but literally… Seeing it now full-fledged – watching the easing of his forehead, the deep groves around his eyes, and the tension in his jaw – brought forth a genuine burst of happiness as she had not experienced in a long while.  There was something tremendously healing in giving.  She smiled in that way she had only done once or twice in her life; in pure joy. 

She hadn't seen it coming – even with her vampire and human reflexes combined, she hadn't seen it coming.  He kissed her suddenly, the surprise of it making her lose her balance, trapped as she was between the window and him.  It only made him hold her around the waist to steady her and bring her back to him to kiss her again. 

She had done her fair share of kissing before, a few humans and even a vampire, but it was the first time that she thought that one could be burned alive by a single kiss… that just a few moments of mouth to mouth could torch your body and soul in equal measure.  Vampire or no vampire, her heart didn't care at the moment as it tried to prove all the myths of the bloodsuckers wrong and tried to beat its way out of her chest.  Her skin caught on fire...  It was too much… he was too much… this was too much… everything between them was too much…

She pushed him away at last when she thought she would melt like a wax-doll left in the Sahara heat.

He was breathing hard as he stood there staring at her.

"I have to go."  He said finally, running his hand over the back of his neck and turning around to the sofa.

"Yes, you should."  She heard her own soft reply and watched him grab his bag and leave, unable to move from where he had left her.  She touched her lips and thought for sure that they were singed. 

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