I have a warped sense of humour that isn't always apparent. Well, here it is, three sheets to the wind. This one-shot sprang from a conversation about Tyler, his various sticking out bits, and Meredith.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: The Vampire Diaries
Disclaimer: VD and its world is the property of LJS. I borrow it in order to abuse it in the worst way possible. Tyler's promontory body parts are unlikely to be her concept. I have no concept of any of the characters and as such, may miswrite them totally. Warning: if you have a weak heart or stomach, please do not read this. I will not be responsible for any nausea, brain haemorrhages or attacks of dementia you may experience whilst reading this.

Man's Best Friend: A Tale of Tyler and Meredith

Foreword: (written by Elena Gilbert)

I still can't believe it. I thought I knew what fear meant when Damon was hunting me, when Stefan was stuck in that well and dying. I didn't think anything could be worse than dying, or being dredged up in a thousand fanfics as inferior to Bonnie, of all people.

But nothing, I tell you, dear diary, nothing could be more terrible than the sight of Tyler's six inches. And my god…what he does with those six inches, it's disgusting. The way they just grow and grow and oh god, it's obvious he's never bothered to clean them.

Yes, dear diary, Tyler Smallwood has the most disgusting toenails I have ever seen.

It's not so much him, for once. I could stand to look at Tyler's face (after all, there is something rather savage and exciting about him) but having to look at half a foot of grey-green mould- covered spikes, it's enough to make you vomit.

Tyler doesn't fight fair anymore. He's found the ultimate example of germ warfare; in fact, for him to wash his feet now would probably be genocide to millions of innocent bacteria. It's not enough that he has more hair than a tribe of orang-utans and about half the intelligence, he has to have attention. His party trick is certainly unusual. He doesn't need a tin-opener anymore; those skewers of his are more than just decoration.

He is quite definitely the most *replusive* specimen of lycanthropy I have ever encountered. Or so we thought. But, dear diary, something quite odd is happening. I think it's to do with the pheromones his feet are releasing. That's what Alaric thinks and I don't have any other explanation for what's happened.

It was my fault, I suppose. Saying that it was in the interest of science to find out just what that mould on his feet was; that it probably gave the cure for BSE or something. Well, you know Meredith. Give her a mystery and she has to solve it. She approached Tyler, alone. And the next thing we know…

~*~

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…not even a mouse. Tyler had eaten them all months before and had been reduced to spiders and flies after his nails became too blunt to open cans of pedigree Chum. But then it had all changed.

"Hold still," Meredith said from the region below his waist. Her voice was muffled; probably by the surgical mask she had attached to her face. Tyler was lounging in a chair, watching TV while she knelt on the floor. "When this is done, you'll feel so much better."

Tyler looked down at her. He tried pouting and nearly bit off his own lip. "Well how am I going to open tins?" he demanded. This was worrying him. Ever since Meredith had come into his life, she'd altered so much. His nights were no longer filled with late-night television and the drooling vacancy that occurred in Tyler where thought occurred in other people.

He looked at her affectionately, her eyes expressionless over the mask but in the instant before she pulled the protective goggles over her face, he saw quiet devotion, replaced by grim resolve.

Yes, Tyler thought, his life had been empty before Meredith with her shiny black hair and knowing grey eyes. A babe who could count higher than her fingers, who ate from a china bowl of all things, that didn't even have three letters on the side. Who used cutlery and who didn't beg. Meredith was class and Tyler never knew why she loved him so much.

Where before, his days had been quiet - watched constantly by the Salvatore brothers, who were the polite equivalent of the Mafia, avoiding that spooky redhead who had taken up chanting, sneering at them all from a safe distance, say France. Now his nights were filled with mad, uncontrolled, passionate…

Meredith switched on the sander.

…disinfecting. Tyler sighed and braced himself as the whirring machine inched closer to the razor spikes on his feet. He didn't know why he put up with it. he supposed in a way, he liked being dominated and Meredith certainly did that. She knew words with four sylla…slyab…sbaly…sounds. She could make the Hamster song sound like a literary masterpiece.

The whirring blade connected and screamed in protest as it came up against the rhino-horn quality of Tyler's toenails. Mould began to spatter the walls as it was sliced away. Tyler was shaking from the vibrations and as Meredith forced the sander down the Krueger-lances of his feet, Tyler's teeth began to chatter more frantically than a Jerry Springer guest.

Meredith switched off the sander and lifted the goggles, wiping away flecks of possibly poisonous grime. "It's no use," she said sternly. Tyler looked down at his feet. Six inches of dead material looked back.

"You could always just-" he began helpfully, but Meredith cut him off.

"Ty, it's disgusting. No one should be able to engrave headstones with their feet."

"I needed the money," he said sullenly. "Look Mere, the file didn't work, nor did the hacksaw, the scissors, the jaws of life, the cleaver, any of the tools on the power drill - why don't we just leave it?" His tone was getting desperate. Much as Tyler Smallwood hated to admit it, he was afraid of Meredith.

"No! No," and Meredith's jaw set in a way that he couldn't fail to recognise. It was the jaw of a thousand owners who were prepared to get out a rolled-up newspaper if they had to. "Those…things are going. There's one chance left."

She produced a bottle with a flourish. Tyler looked at it; it was the kind you found in a science lab, big, made of glass and stoppered. There was a yellow label on the side with a grinning skull. Familiar, Tyler thought, squinting at it. But the liquid inside was clear.

"Vodka?" he said hopefully.

"It's about 100% proof," Meredith said. "Let's put it that way." She hesitated. "Put your…feet on the floor - no, not on the good rug," she said hastily. "It'll dissolve."

Tyler sighed and shifter his feet onto a floor that was black as his reputation, despite all Meredith's efforts to clean both up. She snapped her thick gloves for a last time, then took out the stopper. Delicately she tilted the bottle and let a thin stream run onto the…appendages.

There was a fizzing sound and steam began to rise in a thick grey cloud until it reached Tyler's nose. Signals began to flicker to his brain. They went something like this:

Nose: God, something smells bad.

Brain: Do it? It not reaching us up here.

Nose: I think…I think it's the nails.

Brain: What nails? On de wall?

Nose: On the feet, you idiot. Look, what happened to cognitive processes, eh? Cogito ergo sum and all that.

Brain: What feet?

Nose: Look, I could have been famous by now. I could have been on Jamie Theakston's face - most requested nose for plastic surgery. But no, I get stuck with a brain that you couldn't find with a microscope in a head like a meatball. Look you dumb mass of synapses, there's a poisonous gas filtering through the system. If you're not careful you're going to pass-

Tyler inhaled sharply and the fumes knocked him into blissful darkness.

~*~

"Where am I?" he groaned. He felt really strange. His feet were…light. And there was something wrong with his skin - it was tingling. Tyler opened his eyes to see a vision of loveliness.

Then the Pedigree Chum can disappeared from his vision and was replaced by Meredith. "I thought that'd wake you," she said, looking very pleased with herself. "Wait Ty," and as he started to get up, Meredith's hands held him down. "I should warn….I've made a few…alterations while you were out."

"Whadda you mean?" he said in alarm. Then he stood up and staggered over to the mirror - one of Mere's strange ideas, but he had agreed. And stared.

His skin had changed colour! It wasn't it's usual decaying mud colour, but pale and…pink. Tyler paled. And his hair - she'd cut it. He looked….Tyler searched for a word from the darkest depths of his memory, from times before the werewolf business. Presentable. Human.

"What have you done," he heard his own voice say as if from far away. His voice had dropped to a growl. "I bring you shoes whenever you want, I lick your feet, I let you walk with me every day and this is how you repay me?"

"Ty-" His logical girlfriend was saying, for once worry flashing in her cloud-grey eyes. But Tyler was frantically examining his face in the mirror, searching for any other sign of interference. He sighed in relief. Nothing. He looked at his feet.

In his house, several streets away, Matt Honeycutt was watching 'Scream'. A spine chilling rendition of the title echoed through the air as Neve Campbell ran through the house. Matt shivered. Gods, it sounded like she was nearby. But why was Neve screaming…he strained his ears. It sounded like

"Meredithththththththththth!"

Tyler nearly collapsed with the sheer shock. Gods, what had she done? He was irreparably damaged.

"Oh my god!" he shouted. "What have you done? I was okay with cutting them, Meredith. I didn't say you could manicure them!"

"That was Bonnie, actually." Meredith's voice was cool; verging on glacial, Tyler thought uneasily. He had the feeling throwing himself at her feet and begging for mercy would save a lot of trouble later. Then he noticed his legs. They were clean. Smooth. Hairless.

"Did you-" Tyler took a deep breath. Horrible though the thought was, he had to say it. "Did you wax my legs?" His voice was barely above a growl. He was beginning to shake with anger.

Meredith seemed to realise she had gone too far, but her face hardened into that ice-maiden mask he had seen so often. "It was for your own good-"

"I'm a werewolf!" Tyler shouted. "A werewolf, not a damn Chihuahua! I'm meant to be covered in fur and to howl at the moon, I am meant to be a furry and non-cuddly psychopath who preys on the weak. I am not meant to be a lap-dog that sits at people's feet and whines."

"Oh for goodness' sake, Ty," Meredith said sharply, her hair glimmering as she tilted her head up proudly. "Sit down and shut up." Something in her voice had tones Tyler's wolf self couldn't defy. Meekly, he sat.

"Now," Meredith said, her voice softening just a touch, "Maybe the pedicure was going too far. But you know Bonnie. Once she has an idea, there's no stopping her." Meredith coughed. "And besides…she said it was the will of the gods - in that strange, out of it voice."

Tyler rolled his eyes. "It's all a big act. Look, you should have known something was wrong when she said it was the gods' will that Damon go to her house and strip…"

"Well…" and Meredith looked doubtful, "It meant he wasn't in his house when the bomb went off."

"Anyway," Tyler said, lounging back on the chair. "My toenails will grow again. But…" His stare was pitiful. "You couldn't open a can of Chum for me, could you?"

Meredith gave him a Look. Then she sighed and a tiny smile appeared on her face. "Okay," she said. "If you get me my slippers. And don't drool on them this time. You know my skin gets a rash."

Tyler grinned and ran off. Meredith, meanwhile, leaned back in her chair and sighed contentedly. Some things, she thought, were strange. How could she have missed Tyler's prospects until now? He was so…ohhh. What the others had a problem with, she didn't know.

But what she did know…

Her slippers were dropped at her feet in a slightly damp pile. She looked down at Tyler who was grinning like a Labrador. And Meredith thanked god for his lack of brains. Woman's Best Friend.

~* Fin *~

Email Ki, probably to complain. I would.