Tyed - Chapter 20: Chapter 20

"Nope." If he denies it maybe she'll reveal that it actually isn't true and this a whole big misunderstanding. "He's only been in there for like, seven years. He got something like twenty, didn't he? Life. I'm sure he got life."
"Twenty years," she corrects, and it sickens his stomach. "But-"
"He's like, seventy now. He won't even live. He won't even live to get out." Colby's touch doesn't help. Tyler fights the urge to shrug him off and jump over the balcony. "Mum, tell me you're making shit up."
"Darling, it's alright," she says and it's not. It's not. "He won't be able to hurt you, and it's not for another few weeks-"
"A few weeks? Just a few weeks?" He feels his chest tighten. Colby's hand anchors him to reality. "Why? Why is he getting out?"
His mother is silent for a long moment. "He's got stage four cancer, darling. They're letting him out because he's going to die."
"He can fucking die in prison, why-" Tyler's choking now. He stops, coughing, struggling to find his footing. Why has the world suddenly upturned? What did he do? "I need a minute."
"I know." She says softly. "I'll see you on Saturday, alright? Call me later if you need to."
She's come a long way, Tyler can give her that. She used to be so bad at this shit, although it wasn't really her choice to be stuck with Trey and Tyler, and Tyler can at least be glad that she's trying her best now that she is stuck with them. He puts his phone down. He can't even process what she said, what it really means.
"I... Can I ask what happened? If I heard correctly?" Colby says after a moment of silence, as Tyler's struggling to put the words together himself.
"My dad," he says as the words roll around like drops of acid on the tip of his tongue. "Is getting out of prison." Colby's silence forces Tyler to finish the sentence. "In less than a month." More silence, but the sentence isn't finished. Tyler just doesn't want to finish it. "Because he's dying."
More silence, but that's all there is to say. Tyler leans on the banister, head in his hands.
"I wish I knew," Colby finally speaks, and Tyler lets out a breath. "...how to react to that."
"Me fucking too." Tyler groans, hiding his face behind his hands. "Jesus, I can't stop being a mess, can I?"
"It's not your fault," Colby says, but even so, he sounds tired. "What do you want to do?"
Tyler doesn't know. He's never fucking known what he wants. He's so frequently wrong and fucking things up by chasing what he thinks he wants; why can't it be easy? Why can't things be simple and straightforward?
"I just want," Tyler says, thinking aloud, "things to be normal. I want a normal relationship where it isn't burdened by shit like this."
Colby grips Tyler's shoulder, turning him around to face him. Tyler doesn't want to look at him, but his hands naturally fall from his face and he has little choice but to meet Colby's eyes. His gaze is intense, and Tyler struggles to keep it; he finds himself gazing over Colby's shoulder, until a gentle touch of his chin brings Tyler's gaze back up to Colby's. Tyler hates that even this, now, is able to take his breath away.
Tyler begins to stutter more apologies, barely aware of what he's saying. "You don't have to deal with this. You shouldn't have to. I can figure something out, you can..."
"Tyler." Colby's level voice shuts him up. For a moment, Tyler's staring in silence, waiting. Waiting with bated breath for Colby to speak again. It's so easy to just fall into step with him, wait for him, do what he wanted, isn't it?
Colby smiles softly. "I don't think you're ever going to get that."
Tyler furrows his brow. "What?"
"I don't think you're ever going to get a normal relationship. You've got this baggage with you, and it's going to follow you no matter what you do." Colby's tone sounds like it's meant to be encouraging, but it isn't.
"Thanks, I don't know what-"
"But I don't know how many times I have to repeat that I don't care about any of that." Colby's hand runs along Tyler's cheek, and Tyler closes his eyes, leaning into the touch. He doesn't want to think about his father, not now and not ever; he just wants things to be easy. He wants Colby to make things easy. And he has, hasn't he? "I don't understand why on earth you'd want things to be normal. It gets so boring, so fast."
"But this is all bad. Everything that's different about me is bad, and hard," and Tyler's voice is on the edge of breaking but he's keeping the tears in. Being mindless was so much better than this. "And I don't know how you could want that."
"I want you to feel better, sure," Colby says softly, "but I'll deal with whatever I have to. As long as you want me to."
His voice is soft and just that little bit uncertain. And it's hidden, but it's there: the real thing that Colby wants from him, what Colby's getting from this, why he's doing all he's doing: he just wants to be wanted. He wants to be wanted and needed and what's so great about that is Tyler does want and need him and maybe, just maybe this will work. Maybe, just maybe, Tyler can stop running away from everyone who touches him like he's afraid of being burnt. He's not afraid of being burnt; he's afraid of the fire spreading. Afraid of burning everyone he cares about.
He's got to be careful, and both of them have a lot to prove. Colby still hasn't seen the worst, and Tyler's certain there will come a day when he tires of Tyler's shit and decides to move on. And Tyler hasn't proved to Colby that he's what he wants completely yet, but now he knows what to do.
He reaches up and pulls Colby towards him, kissing him harder than he originally intended. Colby seems surprised, but settles into it easily. It's not too long, though, before Colby pulls away. "While I appreciate the enthusiasm," he says, "we're still in a public restaurant. Come sit back down."
Tyler's happy to follow that direction, but as soon as he's not kissing Colby anymore, he's reminded of what he just heard. His dad's getting out of jail. And he's dying.
Most people would be happy about one and sad about the other. While that's true for Tyler, it's flipped. If only he could die in jail.
He sits down, anxiously pulling at his sleeve. His mum's going to want to see him. Trey would probably hate it even more than Tyler does. Tyler never understood how his mother seemingly forgave his father as much as she did. She had it the worst of all of them.
"I just-" Tyler begins, before wondering if it's okay to even keep going on about it. He looks at Colby's face and realises he's being stupid. They just had a whole thing and Tyler can talk about it. "Sorry, you don't mind if I-"
"Go on," Colby says, confirming what Tyler's rational mind was thinking, even if his anxiety had been saying otherwise.
"I just don't know what to do about any of this," Tyler admits. It feels weird to be admitting something that feels so personal. He laughs a little. "I just know that I don't really want you meeting my family. At least not all of them."
"I feel like that's probably fair," Colby says. "Although eventually I'd like to meet the good ones."
Tyler smiles wryly. As long as Colby only meets one of his parents, and not the other, his secret might be safe. That's something he's certain can never come out. "I would invite you to meet my mum and brother on Saturday, but considering how new this is and the fact that my brother will be having a meltdown..."
"Because of... the news?" Colby asks, and Tyler nods, biting his lip.
"Because of the news." Tyler goes from playing with his sleeve to playing with his fork, feeling like a kid waiting impatiently for dinner. Well, not the kid he ever was, but a kid. "He had it pretty bad with my dad. So did my mum, except she seems to forgive him much more. Out of the three of us, he liked me the most."
Tyler hopes he doesn't have to discuss his aunts, or cousins, or any of that. It's easier to hide the mess the less people are discussed.
"I assume that doesn't change much," Colby says correctly. Tyler smiles wryly. Should he feel guilty for being glad his dad is dying? Probably not. The fact that Tyler even exists is a crime and it's his father's fault.
"Not fucking really. I know it sounds shitty to say, but I'm not really sad he's dying at all." It registers as a big thing, and there's certainly emotion there, but none of it is sadness.
Colby leans back in his chair, gazing at Tyler with a look he didn't really like. "Not even a little bit? I mean, you never felt any love for him at all?"
"I mean, maybe when I was a fucking child, before he did all the horrible shit he did, except he was always doing horrible shit for as long as I can remember. I hate him." Sickness rises in Tyler's gut at the words. Colby probably means well, but can't he understand- horrible shit means horrible shit. "Did I tell you about the time he beat Trey so badly he didn't speak for a year?" Or the crimes against nature? The reason Trey and Tyler are both so fucked up in different ways? "I could think of a lot of horrible things he's done, and I don't really feel like listing them off right now, but the summary is that no I don't feel sad that he's dying pretty much at all."
"Alright." Colby seems somewhat sceptical, but in accordance with Tyler's silent pleas, he drops the subject. "I'm sorry for asking."
"I mean, it's fine." Is it? Tyler doesn't know, but he doesn't care to fight. "It helps talking about it, I guess. Because even if I don't think I'm sad, there's still a lot of conflicting emotions, because... I don't know what it's going to be like, seeing him. If I even do. He's like, seventy or something, and he was always old, but now it's like, if I see him he'll be fragile and old and dying and I don't know how that'll work in my brain, you know?"
"I think you'll be strong enough to deal with it. Because in a way, doesn't it make it easier? He's old enough to be your grandfather. He's used up all of his power and he doesn't have any more. You'll see him and you'll be in control then. Of course, you wouldn't be able to do anything he did to you, but he won't be able to hurt you."
Tyler twitches at parts of Colby's words, but he seemingly hides it well enough, as Colby fails to react. His central thesis is right, though; not that Tyler can imagine it. He can't see his father as anything less than the terrifying hurricane that would come through and ruin everything when Tyler least expected it. Or when he did. Always, he ruined everything.
"Thank you," Tyler mutters, sitting back as their food arrives. He's glad it didn't come in the middle of a breakdown that Tyler was sure was coming. Tonight hasn't been a great night mental health wise, but in terms of his relationship with Colby, it honestly probably couldn't have gone better.
And that's what Tyler wants to focus on. He wants to think about Colby tonight, wants to make him feel wanted and needed and to give him everything, in return for how much he's given Tyler. He can think about his father another day. Tonight is a night for Colby and him, and nobody else is going to intrude on that anymore.
He won't let that happen.
---
"Is everything okay?" Kali whispers, so loud she could probably be heard as easily as if she just said it, but Tyler doesn't mind. They're hiding out the back of the church, and nobody's going to hear them here, so it doesn't really matter. Everyone's asleep or doing their own things that they shouldn't be doing and nobody will bother Tyler and Kali.
"Yeah, everything's fine," Tyler says. Relatively speaking, that's true. Trey's in a bad way still, but that was the case this morning when they last spoke, so Kali knows that. Mummy's sick too, but Kali knows that as well. Nothing is any worse than it was. "I wanted to show you what Kevin gave me."
"What'd he give you?" Kali asks, suspicious. She's not used to Tyler and Kevin being friends and neither is Tyler so it makes sense.
"Okay, but first. You remember how your dad got rid of the written down version of Princess Chelsea's adventures?" Tyler asks, a slow grin catching him. Kali nods, and as she does Tyler's heading over to the bush he'd hidden some stuff in earlier.
He pulls out the book as he talks about it. "Your dad left his copy of the Bible behind at church and I stole it. I know it's his and that you won't get in trouble cause I saw him looking for it before dinner and if you were gonna get in trouble he would've got you in trouble already for it, right?"
"Tyler, oh my god, you can't," she gasps, coming over to look at it. "Yeah, it's his, and he's going to kill you if he finds out you took it!"
"He won't," Tyler grins, "because we're gonna get rid of it."
"No!" Kali gasps, but she's also grinning too now. "Is this what Kevin gave you?"
"No," Tyler admits. "He gave me this."
Tyler rummages around in the bush for another minute before pulling out a long plastic thing with a little trigger button. Kali looks at it in curiosity, confused, before Tyler pulls the little trigger and a flame comes out of the end of it. "It's a lighter," Tyler explains, "it's just a little weird looking."
Kali looks nervously between Tyler's wild eyes, the flickering flame, and the Bible. "We're gonna burn it?"
Tyler finds himself smiling to the point of almost laughing. "Yeah!"
"Is that a good idea?"
"He'll never find it, plus it feels really good to burn things." He realises how crazy he sounds when he says that, so he dials it back. "I mean, bad things that belong to bad people. You can just make them stop existing. It's kind of cool."
"He won't hurt us because of this?"
"He won't know it was us. He won't even know it was burnt." Tyler can see Kali's hesitance falling away, and he takes her hand, putting the lighter in it. She looks a little bit uncertain, but there's mischief pulling at her mouth, exactly what he wanted. He holds the book up.
"Try it," he says, letting go of the lighter and leaving her to hold it.
She presses down the button and jumps a little at the flame that comes out. Even though it was going to happen, it still surprises her. She holds it tentatively towards the edge of the book, uncertain.
"Go on," Tyler urges her gently, moving the book towards the flame. She moves the flame away slightly.
"You, uh," she hesitates, "you don't think God will be mad at us?"
Tyler scoffs. "You think God cares about us when he lets this stuff happen to us? You should've seen what Daddy did to Trey. God probably isn't even real. And if he is do you really think he cares about one little book that we're burning because of your dad and not because of God?"
"Don't say that stuff," Kali mutters. Tyler assumes she was talking about the God not being real bit, because she seems convinced by the rest; convinced enough to set the flame right up against the pages of the book.
"Is it working?" she asks after a moment, as the flame appears to stay in the same spot she's holding it. When she moves it away, though, the flame stays in that place on the book, quietly lapping up the pages as fuel. Tyler's eyes follow its yellow dance; it's only small, though, not yet bit enough to envelop the book.
"Do it again," he says, perhaps a little too eager. There's a thrill in destroying something that represents his best friend's pain, and he's trying to contain that thrill for the sake of his best friend.
Kali gives him an odd look, but does it, touching the flame against the side of the book. She holds it there for a moment, until that too begins to alight. Without Tyler saying anything, she touches it again on the top, the bottom, anywhere the pages are; the initial flame is beginning to spread, and Tyler's realising now that it probably won't be able to eat the cover, not without being a little bit stronger.
He gestures for Kali to step back, and places the book on the ground, opening up the front cover so that the flames have more room to roam. The initial flame starts to spread over the front page, and its compatriots soon come to join. Kali wraps her hand around Tyler's arm, a little uncertain of the fire; that day they all ran stuck together in her mind, each bad part glued to every other part, such that it was all bad. She hated going to the lake now, and fire, too, became intertwined with the pain she'd felt when she'd gotten home that day.
But in that bad, bad day, before the worst, Tyler remembers running through the fire holding Kevin's hand, and never feeling so free as that one moment.
That's what he's chasing, what he finds in watching a Bible slowly burn; freedom.