Tyed - Chapter 17: Chapter 17

Tyler leans into Colby's side, closing his eyes. Memories so old and repressed they don't seem real are dredged up by this simple act, but Tyler reminds himself of what's real. He breathes in, and it smells like Colby, and he hates how much he's struggling to ground himself in the here and now but he's doing it. Sort of, somehow.
"Tell me a story," Tyler says, hoping to ground himself a bit better by listening to Colby's voice. "Something about you."
"About me?" Colby almost seems surprised, but if he is it's not enough to tell. "I'm not sure there are many good stories to tell."
"Of course there are." Tyler looks up at him, blinking slowly. The sun forms a halo around his head, and Tyler closes his eyes and tries not to see fire through red hair. He'd describe Colby's hair as auburn, maybe, and the sun shows the red undertones. "I don't know, just tell me about yourself."
Colby shrugs. "Well, I've got a brother, five years younger, and he's married and living in Sydney. He's a writer, and he was supposed to inherent the company and all that, but he gave it to me because he didn't want it."
"Why was he supposed to inherit in if he was younger? Or at least, like, fifty-fifty?" Tyler asks, interested now. He wonders if he'll ever meet this brother.
"Originally it was fifty-fifty, but I was supposed to run it. My dad was training me for it. But there was a whole big... thing, I guess. Twenty years ago people weren't as cool with queerness as they are now, and my dad didn't take it well. I got kicked out, that's the long and short of it."
"Wow." Tyler's suddenly aware of how obviously gay they look, walking down the street side by side; he's experienced a lot of homophobia, yes, but there were never any real consequences for being queer in Darkfilly Copse. It was spoken of as a sin, but like many actually bad sins, was very common in Darkfilly Copse. "I... Genuinely can't imagine how shitty that must be."
"Well, it wasn't the worst thing to happen. I was sixteen, which was old enough to find a job, and it was 2002, so it wasn't like there was absolutely nobody who could help me. My uncle let me stay with him, and my dad died about six or seven years after that, so it wasn't so bad. My brother took his half of the money and left the state, and he gave me the company. He was barely an adult and didn't want to run it. Still doesn't. It worked out fine for both of us."
"Do you still talk to your brother?" Tyler asks, fingers twisting around Colby's arm. As soon as he becomes aware of that nervous habit, he shuts it off.
"Yeah, but we're not close. He was eleven when I left, and while our dad spent my whole life having high expectations of me, he just had them all piled on suddenly then. He didn't deal well with it, and was happy to give it to me as soon as he got the chance."
"What's his name?" Tyler asks when he realises Colby hasn't mentioned it.
"Freddie." Colby pauses for a minute. "He was named after my dad, but he refuses to be called Fred, because he considers that my dad's name."
"It sounds like he hates your dad," Tyler says offhandedly, "and it sounds like your dad deserves it."
"I don't hate my dad." Colby's tone makes it sound like Tyler's being a little ridiculous to suggest he does, but Tyler's confused when he claims not to. "He had issues, but who doesn't?"
"That's... he kicked you out of home?" Tyler shakes his head, regretting mentioning anything. He forgets that he'll just never relate to most people and how they feel about their parents; most people don't have the fucked up situation that he does. "Look, it doesn't matter."
Colby's moment of silence tells Tyler he's fucked up, but not enough for Colby to actually say anything about it. In a way, that's worse. "Let's not discuss this," Colby says, and Tyler bites his lip, cringing with regret. "Can I ask about your brother?"
"What about him?" Tyler asks, turning his head away. Colby already knows what he heard on Sunday, which if Tyler recalls wasn't a whole lot.
"I presume you don't want to talk about your parents. I mean, you don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to. I just want to know about your family, as much as you're willing to tell me."
Tyler laughs a little, not because it's any kind of funny, but because it fills the silence while his mind races. "My brother. What can I tell you about my brother?" What could he tell him? Was there anything he could say at all?
"He's got problems," Tyler decides on. Something in his heart hurts, but it almost always does, so he can ignore it well enough. Showing any kind of vulnerability always adds a weight of dread, stronger than it already is. "He's a good person, though."
"Problems?" Colby asks, and Tyler curses it.
"I don't mean he's shitty or anything. I mean he's, like, in assisted living and that." Doesn't Colby remember? "He's getting better, I think. There was a whole year when we were younger that he didn't even speak. He got really bad at expressing his own thoughts and feelings after that and I just- I feel like I don't know him very well, like, I see him all the time but I still feel like I don't..."
As soon as he realizes just how much he's rambling, it's then that the weight in his chest intensifies, and he clutches at it like anxiety is a physical thing he can grasp and pull out of his sternum. He's told it's anxiety, but he's not worried about any one thing so much as he's just physically repulsed by the level of open he's being. He has too much baggage to begin opening up like this, and Colby doesn't want that- fuck, he's literally Tyler's sugar daddy, the last thing he wants is to deal with his emotional shit. Tyler tries to breathe.
"Are you alright, Tyler?" Colby asks, and Tyler hopes it's not obvious how well he isn't managing right now. He's been trying to manage it, but it's been rising, and when it rises it can't really be shoved back down, only ignored until it bursts.
"I'm sorry," Tyler says, clutching at Colby's arm harder than intended. "I just- I don't know what-"
"Do you need to go home?" Colby asks, and Tyler's so certain he can hear something like disappointment in his voice.
"I don't want to," Tyler admits. "I want- I'll be okay later, just-"
"Lying to me is worse than having to go home. I don't mind, Tyler, we can do this another time."
It feels like a lie, but Tyler clings to him because he doesn't know what else to do. "I'm not- I mean, I will be okay later, I will be," he says. "just... I need a moment, I'm sorry."
"Is it something I said?" Colby asks, and Tyler quickly shakes his head. That's not the case, and he needs that at least to be clear.
"I... I didn't warn you about me being a mess," he admits, hiding in Colby's shoulder. They step off the sidewalk, and Tyler almost doesn't expect Colby's arms around his shoulders, pulling him into a gentle hug. He's got big, strong arms that give better hugs than Tyler expected. "You probably- I don't know, you made your decision too quickly, and-"
"What the fuck are you on about?" Something about Colby's frankness cuts through that line of thought like paper. The anxiety is still there, of course, but cutting through Tyler's bullshit forces him to think about it a little more. "I like you and I'll deal with whatever mess I have to."
"But you shouldn't have to," Tyler mutters. His fingers grasp at Colby's shirt, trying to find purchase. Breathing in his scent seems to help somehow. "I'm sorry."
"You are, invariably, going to have to deal with my mess as some point, too. I just told you about how I got kicked out of home, and I asked you about your family, knowing it was a bit of a mess already. Tyler, if I didn't want to be here, if I didn't want to know, I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't have asked."
Tyler takes a deep breath, trying to find a logical argument to justify his anxiety and not finding one.
"I already know what I'm signing up for. I may not know the details, but I know enough. So let's go home if you want to go home."
Tyler shrugs lightly. "I don't know what I want."
"I can't imagine being out in public right now is going to help. Unless you'd prefer to stay out, let's go home."
"Can I stay with you, though?" Tyler asks as he pulls away, and Colby grabs his hand, a ghost of a smile on his face. He nods lightly, and Tyler has to wonder how often he's dealt with situations like this. He's close to twice Tyler's age, and it's weird to think just how much more experience he has than Tyler. He was fucking married.
Thinking about that doesn't help Tyler be less anxious.
"I'm sorry again," Tyler says as they head back towards the car. "You shouldn't have to do this."
"It's fine, Tyler. There wasn't a reservation, I don't mind, and I care much more about making sure you're okay than anything else."
Surely not anything else, but Tyler doesn't say that. He can sense it'll only make things worse, and he only ever seems to make things worse. He tries to take up as little space as possible, to make the smallest deal of this that he can. He feels worse than might be proportional, but it's also completely possible that he doesn't feel as bad as he should and Colby's trying to be nice by completely understating how much of a burden he's being.
Although it's true that he probably doesn't want to be in public right now.
"You can talk about it as much or little as you like," Colby says as they get into the car. "I may not have gone through what you have, but I have done a lot of listening in my life."
Tyler takes a deep breath. "I'm more concerned than anything about being... I don't know. Annoying, I guess? A burden?"
"I do not think you're being a burden at all right now. Again, I wanted to spend time with you tonight, and I don't care beyond that."
Tyler wants to believe him. "Thank you. I... I'm fine, maybe not great, but fine. We can still-"
"We only have to do what you genuinely want to do," Colby says before Tyler can go much further. He smiles a wry smile. "Although I appreciate how much you care."
"It's just kind of odd," Tyler shrugs. "Aren't you supposed to be calling the shots, or something? Yet you're demanding we do what I want."
"What you need comes before everything else," Colby says, and there's such a comforting way about how he says it that it sincerely helps Tyler's anxiety. "Not prioritising that... doesn't end well."
It's just vague enough that Tyler can't be sure he's talking about a situation he was in himself or something he was in proximity to. He decides that now is not the right time to ask, as curious as he might be; he's already dragged down the mood enough, and he's aware that later he's going to feel better and he's going to want to do things and he doesn't want to ruin this as quickly as he's ruined so much in his life.
"Thank you," Tyler mutters, playing with his fingers. He's seen a lot of superficial kindness, and he's not sure this isn't that, but he thinks he can see at least a little bit of Colby's true character, and he seems like a nice person at heart. Should Tyler really be getting his hopes up, that Colby will always treat him right? He's divorced; should Tyler be worried?
Great, now Tyler is anxious for a completely separate reason, and he feels all the worse for it. Who is he to question Colby's motives, to suspect he's not being genuine in his kindness?
He wrestles with himself and nothing helps. When this happens, usually he spends a day or two or three in bed, talking to people only when they go out of their way to look for him, and then eventually he forgets what he was anxious about and it ends up being ruined or lost anyway because he forgot about it. It's an effective system in getting rid of his worries, even if it isn't efficient or good at preserving the good things that Tyler doesn't want to lose. Clearly, that's not really an option here. Opening up feels like it'll only make things worse, like it'll only dig Tyler deeper into a hole he might someday have to climb out of. Maybe someday soon, if he keeps making dumb decisions.
As Tyler sits there in silence, looking out the window, time takes the edge off, and even if it's not totally fine, he definitely feels better than he did. "Thank you, again," Tyler says after an indeterminate amount of time. "I think I just needed a bit of a quiet moment. I definitely still want to... try... doing stuff. Maybe not straight away, but-"
Colby looks at him, and Tyler realizes he was zoned out too, thinking about something of his own in the silence. He processes what Tyler said a moment late, and a small grin spreads across his face. "Oh, of course, if that's what you want to do."
Tyler blushes and turns away. "Maybe."
He's not that nervous entering Colby's house, even though it's only the second time he's been here. He follows Colby's lead up the stairs, taking in details he missed last time. The house seems new, although there's a few scratches in the laquer on the wooden banisters, probably from moving things up and down the stairs. It's still weirdly clean for a lived-in house; while it's not a scary kind of clean, overly sterile or minimalist, it still just looks like a hotel room that's been lived in for a week at most.
"Are you not home often?" Tyler asks, in a different mindset than he was the last time he was here and able to see things a little differently now.
"Can you tell?" Colby has a bit of a sad smile as he looks around the house. "It's a shame. It's a nice place, but so often I'm travelling for work, or... or I'm just out."
Tyler doesn't mean to come across as jealous when he asks, "what does that mean?"
Luckily, Colby takes him at face value. "It gets lonely easily. I'm good friends with Rye, so I went to the club pretty often. It was nice to be surrounded by people, even if I only talked to them every now and again."
"Aha." Something clicks in Tyler's mind. "You said you're not really a fan of vanilla sex, yet you keep having it, with random people from that club, but only once. You were lonely."
"I felt that much was obvious," Colby shrugs. He doesn't seem too offended at Tyler outing him like that, although Tyler's embarrassed afterwards. "I kept waiting for it to be different, like I said. I didn't want any of them, I just wanted someone. You're the first person in a long while I've still wanted to talk to the morning after."
"The first since your wife?"
"Not quite, but the first uncomplicated one, for sure."
Tyler has to laugh at that. "I can't be the most uncomplicated person you've been with."
"I mean, uncomplicated as in I didn't have to spend weeks trying to sort through how I felt about you." Colby steps in closer, and just like that, Tyler's breath is caught in his throat and he feels the pull towards Colby and he can't quite pay attention anymore. "I've known you for less than a week, but I know I like you and I know I want to know you for quite a while longer."
Tyler leans up and kisses him, and although it's unexpected, Colby leans into it easily. Tyler grips the back of his neck and pulls him closer, not letting his escape; Colby's arms twist around Tyler's abdomen, tugging him in close, and for a moment Tyler's just lost in this kiss and nothing else matters and he can pretend everything else is fine and perfect.
Colby pulls away with some resistance by Tyler, but only to whisper in his ear, "could it be possible that this is all you wanted?"
Tyler laughs. "I mean, I wouldn't manipulate you like that, but I'm not going to lie... I would prefer to do that than anything else right now." He leans up and nips at Colby's ear. "...Master."