Tyed - Chapter 22: Chapter 22

Tyler originally intended to, at some point in the movie, suck Colby's dick or something, but he never gets around to it because he gets kind of invested in the plot. The deception Colby was talking about isn't anything close to the deception Tyler would consider himself to be doing, but he sees the point, regardless.
Tyler doesn't move from the spot he's in for pretty much the whole movie. It's actually quite comfortable, and comforting, Colby's hand in his hair like this; the rest, sitting at his feet with a representative collar around his neck, is casual enough when he doesn't think about how anyone else would view it. When the movie's over, he's invited to stay or go home as he wishes, and he chooses to stay. They don't even have sex that night, mainly because they had quite a bit earlier; Tyler just sleeps in Colby's bed, and when he wakes up he realises it's the first time he's done that without having just had sex with the person he's sharing it with... maybe ever. He certainly can't recall another time off the top of his head.
When he gets dropped off about midday the next day, he's got a mixed bag of feelings. Giddiness from the date, an awkward knowledge that he's sinking way too easily into the BDSM parts of it, and a sharp reminder that his dad's getting out of prison in a month and he has to tell Trey that- well, by now, tomorrow.
He also can't get the thought that he's lying to Colby out of his head.
There's pretty much no one in Tyler's life who he's completely honest with. Kevin and Kali are both gone from Tyler's life, and there's no contacting either of them for different reasons. Trey is much more fragile than Tyler is. His relationship with his mother is far too strained and awkward now that Tyler's an adult. Nancy knows a lot, but not everything, because he's deceiving her in the same way he's deceiving Colby. Lachlen, he could probably honestly tell, since he's far enough removed that Tyler could cut him out completely if he had to but close enough that Tyler can bring him in as well; but Tyler doesn't want to have to explain his situation to anyone, especially not someone who used to, if not now, look at him with a romantic lens.
So by dinnertime Friday, Tyler finds himself doing the unthinkable, and answering that obnoxious, stupid email he got earlier in the week. From Ash, the guy who kept eyeing him up in the club and happens to know his secret because of his proximity to a guy who knows people who work with Trey and it's stupid that he knows, but he does. Why is it like this? Why is he the guy that Tyler can talk to?
His email is short and polite for how annoyed he is, and it doesn't take long for him to get one back. He's eating dinner with his roommates- who have, between them, decided to cover Tyler's food, since he's the reason they don't have to pay rent for another year- when he gets the response.
It's even shorter than Tyler's was. It just says call me and gives a phone number.
Tyler's not technically doing anything wrong or shady, but he's aware of Shouto's low opinion of him, and doesn't want to be perceived as such. He waits to call until he's back in his room, and it's picked up almost immediately. The large amount of background noise tells Tyler it's being answered through the bluetooth in a car.
"Hello?" Ash asks.
"Hi, it's me. Tyler. You just told me to call?"
"Oh, Tyler, of course." Ash laughs. "I'm in the car right now with my polycule, hope that's cool. I was going to invite you to come out with us tonight, and we can talk."
"Out?"
"We're not going too crazy, probably. Or at least we won't drag you along for the crazy." Ash chuckles. "But you don't have to at all. I can send them along, meet up with them afterwards."
"I don't have any money."
"Not a problem."
Tyler can't be blamed for having vices.
He doesn't know these people at all, and yet, he tells Ash his address and heads outside to wait for him. He thinks about it, and as long as he keeps his collar on him, doesn't jerk off, and doesn't sleep with anyone else, he's not breaking any rules. So why does he feel like he's betraying Colby?
He feels like he's doing something wrong, yet he still gets into that car, squishes into the backseat next to two other blondes, and introduces himself.
"I know who you are," the girl says. "It's nice to meet you though."
Tyler barks a laugh. "I forgot you all know me and my deep secrets. That's the whole point."
The girl shrugs. "I'm Emma, she/her."
The last person gives Tyler a fistbump. "And I'm Jai, any pronouns. You know James and Ash, I'm told."
"We have met," Tyler corrects them. "To be clear, I'm not here to join the collection."
Ash laughs loudly from the front seat. "Excuse me?"
"You don't realise how it looks? You've got three blonde-haired, blue-eyed partners, I'm not going to be the fourth."
"I mean, that's true," Ash shrugs. "Mostly coincidence, though. James was dating both of them before I came along. Nah, I hear you're with Colby Blake, and I don't want to mess with that."
"Why not?"
Ash gives him a weird look in the rearview mirror. "Because I'm not a homewrecker?"
"Oh." Tyler's a little embarrassed it was that simply. "Sorry. You said it like there was a reason you were scared of him, or something." In truth, Tyler realises he knows very little about Colby; he wants the outside information, just in case. He's waiting to be proven wrong.
"No, he's fine. I only know him tangentially, though, and I heard he and his ex had a messy divorce. You know about her, right?"
"I do, but I haven't met her," Tyler shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe he's lying to me about her, and that'd make my problem easier."
"Ah, right, your problem." Ash nods. "Everyone here knows everything. We all learned before we knew you, and we won't tell anyone. You know that James worked on the Darkfilly Copse situation, and specifically your brother, so that's why we all know."
"Right." Tyler shrugs it off; the whole reason he's here is because all of these people know his secret, and he can talk about it. They're not looking at him like he has two heads, and Ash isn't afraid to imply that he would date Tyler if he wasn't in a relationship- Tyler can do this. Sometimes it can be fine. Probably not always, but sometimes. "Uh. I guess mainly my problem is that I feel like I'm lying to Colby if I don't tell him."
It's Emma who asks, "if you don't tell him about Darkfilly Copse?"
"He knows about that," Tyler answers. "To use Ash's wording, I mean the circumstances of my birth."
"Wouldn't he know about that, if he knows about Darkfilly Copse?" Ash asks.
Tyler sighs, leaning back into the seat. "It's not like every single bad thing that happened there is common knowledge. Everyone knows it was a cult with a child abuse problem, but how deep that abuse went and what exactly they did isn't public information. People don't want it to be public information. Well, some people do, people who have sick fucking fetishes and are all about saviour complexes, who pretended to be about helping us. I could complain for hours about how people react when they know. Not you, but some people."
James laughs. "Oh, I know. I work with people in these situations. I know the type you're talking about- most commonly it's Christian mums who think all victims are absolutely angelic and don't realise they have problems, too. Or the dudes who always harrass the teenage girls trying to retraumatise them, wanting a girl with 'daddy issues'. Then there's the conspiracy theorists who want me to tell them there's hundreds of thousands of mole children in tunnels under the country being used for sex. They're the worst."
"They don't realise that pedophiles can just abuse their own god damn children," Tyler scoffs. "Or the neighbour's children, or their cousins, or their children's friends. Or their students, or patients, or the kids they babysit."
James shrugs. "It's a situation so very commonly not understood. And it's not understood from the perspective of the kids. They understand how pedophiles work, how deeply sick they are, but they don't understand how it affects kids and who those kids actually are."
Tyler scoffs. "Nobody cares about the victims, you know? They just have a pathological obsession with the crimes."
It goes silent for a moment and Tyler realises he doesn't know these people at all. "Sorry. This is essentially the first time any of us have properly met and I'm complaining about pedophilia."
"It's along the lines of what we expected," Ash says. Tyler has no idea where they're going. "Par for the course, really. None of us are fazed by it."
"I'm personally affected, too," Emma admits after a minute. "Child-on-child, though."
Tyler swallows as he thinks of how to answer that. "Damn. You say that like it's nothing."
"I found some understanding people to talk to about it, and it made it easier to say," she says. "You're in good hands."
"So if I may ask," Ash says then, "how much, then, does Colby know about your trauma? To me that seems more pertinent to a relationship than what we're calling the circumstances of your birth, at least in this particular instance."
It's such a nice, sanitized phrase. Tyler would rather it stay sanitized, detached. "He knows I have some trauma, because he knows I come from Darkfilly Copse, which is child abuse capital of Victoria and he knew that. I... might've told him my father was horrible, I don't remember. And he knows Trey exists, but he hasn't met any of my family yet. But, umm.... He's getting out of prison."
As soon as it occurs to him that it hasn't been said, he can't keep it out of his mouth. If he's going to talk about it to anyone, it should be here, now. "What, Colby?" James asks before he properly processes Tyler's words.
"Tyler's father," Jai corrects James so Tyler doesn't have to. "Can I ask why?"
Tyler appreciates that they're doing their best not to pry too much, waiting for him to offer up information. Tyler's therapist wasn't the greatest at doing that, back in high school. He was a good therapist in helping Tyler learn how to be a person, though. "He has terminal cancer," Tyler says, feeling absolutely numb when he says it. If he feels anything about it it's buried deep. "So he gets to get out and see his family before he dies. Or that's the idea."
"That's harsh," Ash mutters. "For you, I mean."
"Are you going to see him?" Emma asks, gentle.
"I don't want to," Tyler admits. "My first instinct is to fuck off out of the country before he can find me, wait for him to die, and spit on his grave."
"Strong opinion, but fair," James says, the person who's most familiar with Tyler's situation. "I would, too. How do your mother and brother feel about it? And your... uh. You have a larger family than just them, don't you?"
"Aunts, cousins. My mother's sisters and their children, so my aunts and cousins. I'm not close with any of them." Tyler doesn't blame James for talking around his extended family, either. "So I don't know. My mum seems to be at least a little sympathetic. Trey doesn't know yet."
"Does Colby?"
"He knows he's getting out, yeah. He seemed to encourage me to go talk to him, but he doesn't know how bad it got." Tyler scoffs. "I'm worried about Trey finding out. And I think Colby might want to meet my family. I can't let him do that."
"Well, why not?" Ash asks.
"The circumstances," Tyler hisses.
Ash shrugs. "If he doesn't meet your father, he's safe from finding out, right? There's no reason he'd meet your mother and brother and assume anything was wrong with you."
"You know Trey's problems," Tyler argues, "don't you think Trey's problems raise those kinds of alarms?"
"In people who are looking for it, maybe. But unless Colby already suspects your secret, he won't connect the dots other than 'they both take after their mother'."
"Still, it's been a god damn week," Tyler sighs. "I barely know him yet."
"That's enough reason to tell him to wait," Emma says. It's logical, but somehow Tyler feels it isn't that easy.
"I mean... I want to. But I'm worried, you know? I don't want to get too far before he decides it's too much. I kind of want to get it all out of the way now, as much as I... also don't want to."
"There's something you probably need to decide now," Jai says, and Tyler's waiting anxiously for them to finish the sentence even as he's trying to determine where they're all going. He knows what suburb Ash is driving through, but he doesn't recognise the streets. "Are you ever going to tell him? About those circumstances?"
"Why do I need to decide that now?"
"Because if you want to get everything out of the way now, that's something he'll expect to be told alongside everything else. If he finds out at a much later date he'll know you wanted to hide it from him."
Tyler's stomach churns at the idea. "Be honest, if you were dating someone and you found that out about them months into the relationship, what would you do?"
There's a long moment of silence and Tyler's heart falls. "Well," Jai's the first to answer, "if I thought they had told me all of their secrets, I might be upset. And, completely honestly, I would not have kids with that person, not biological ones. But otherwise, Tyler, it's not so bad."
"I agree with that," Ash tells him. "It's something I'd like said to me straight up, but it wouldn't be a deal breaker if it's a situation like yours. I mean, like it wouldn't affect anything materially. Trey's a bit different."
James sighs. "The truth is, we're the wrong people to ask, Tyler. We don't care, but I'm not going to lie to you and say nobody would. Some people might. It's kind of like... Jai, tell me if I'm out of line here, but it's kind of like how some people refuse to date trans people just because they're trans, even if materially it's the same as if they were cis. It doesn't make sense to me- as far as I'm concerned a hole's a hole's a hole- but some people care."
"I would argue Tyler's situation is less serious than that," Jai says, "because often those people are making assumptions about trans people that aren't inherently true, like about surgery, or they're transphobic, or transphobic on top of homophobic and don't want to be gay. But what assumptions is anyone going to make about Tyler, or Trey? You could be ableist about it, but can you even be ableist towards Tyler considering he's abled?"
"Physically abled," Tyler corrects them, "but the PTSD isn't in my genes."
"Well, exactly," Jai says. "What're people going to find disgusting about that?"
"You say that," Tyler responds, "yet we're all refusing to say what it is we're talking about because we know it's disgusting and we know people aren't going to like it."
"It's not your fault," Emma tries.
"It being not my fault doesn't make it any less disgusting to anyone else." Tyler covers his eyes with his hands. "But, fuck, he's already fucked me. What's he going to think when he realises he's fucked a freak without even realising it?"
"Nothing," Ash says with confidence Tyler deduces is false, although it's a good act. "He reacted pretty alright to the whole Darkfilly Copse thing, is it really so different?"
"Yes," Tyler gritted his teeth, "yes it is. I ended up being popular by the end of high school, but at the start, everybody knew about Darkfilly Copse and I couldn't hide it. I was called a stupid messed up druggie bogan cultist inbred faggot freak, just for knowing I came from there. Imagine what it would've been like if they knew the truth."
---
Tyler's getting a routine and it's nice.
Sunday morning, after church, he and Kali go to the river and talk. Sundays tie up parents in all kinds of stuff, so the days themselves are easy. He and Kali work on the little stick-hut they're building. Sometimes they talk about escaping again, but Tyler has to catch Kali in a really good mood to do that, because if he doesn't, she shrinks in on herself and goes all quiet and Tyler has to talk about safer things like Princess Chelsea and her new unipeg (or unicorn pegasus, but Kali insists on calling it a unipeg) until Kali calms down again. She's afraid to go too far into the forest now. Trey still doesn't talk.
After that, Tyler helps Trey get their chores done. Trey's almost back to normal; he smiles again if Tyler tells a good joke, although it doesn't last as long as it used to. He'll hug people again, although he tends to do it when their father isn't looking, because sometimes their father asks for a hug and Trey freezes up and doesn't do it and then he gets in trouble. Mummy's been saying recently, when their father isn't around, that she's really proud of Tyler. That's nice, because he doesn't hear that very often. Sometimes, on Sundays, it's just Trey and Tyler and their mum, and those times she lets them sit with her while she's having a nap, curled up on her bed with Trey and Tyler on either side. She only has a single bed, and it doesn't really fit three people, but it's the safest Tyler ever feels, except for one time, which is Saturday nights. On Sunday nights they eat dinner together and Tyler holds Trey's hand under the table because Trey seems to shake a little less when Tyler does that, although he has to let go and hide whenever Trey starts getting possessed, which happens sometimes still. It seems to come and go; he'll last three weeks being fine, and then five times in one day he'll start convulsing. He hides in their room so often that their father usually doesn't see, and that makes him a little bit safer. Tyler hates it when Trey's caught like that, 'cause then he gets beaten again and loses the smile for good for another week.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Tyler goes to school and is able to get three hours playing with the other kids in before he has to go home. It's mostly just Kali that he sits with, but he tries to get Trey to sit with them too, and Kevin sometimes. Kevin is always quiet and awkward around Kali and Trey, and he won't sit with Tyler in class. He just looks at him all the time from across the room. Tyler knows he wants to run away again. So does he, but he needs a better plan than they had last time.
Weeknights, Tyler has to stay in his room, because he knows that if his father comes looking for him and he isn't there he's going to get in huge, huge trouble. Weeknights are the worst nights because not only do they have those terrible dinners like Sundays but Tyler's father wants to spend time with him more often than he doesn't and Tyler hates, hates, hates having to go into his father's room those nights. There isn't anything worse, and he just drifts away in his mind, trying to spend it with Princess Chelsea and her unipeg instead, or wishing it was Saturday night. Kali said that she could completely leave behind what was physically happening to her body and just be with Princess Chelsea, but that didn't work as well for Tyler. It just numbed the pain a little bit.
But Saturdays were amazing.
Saturday was when Tyler's father did all the yardwork, so he was outside for hours and Tyler and Trey could play inside, free from worrying about him. Then their father would go visit Tyler's aunts and cousins. He wasn't home from the morning until after the sun went down, and then Tyler would eat dinner with his mum and his brother and even though it was hard to talk about stuff it wasn't painful like it was when their father was there. There was a level on which Tyler felt his mum and him were equal under the weight of his father, although she was still strict about him following the rules, insisting their father was to be listened to. Tyler thought it was stupid, but she always looked afraid when he questioned her. She said Tyler was incredibly lucky to be his father's favourite and not everyone could get away with doing the bad things he did.
And then, that night, Tyler always did a bad thing. When his father got home he'd always go pretty much straight to bed, ready to get up early for church in the morning. He never wanted to spend time with Tyler on Saturday nights. It was the perfect time for Tyler to escape.
He would sneak out the window, leaving it ajar with a stick so he could sneak back in. Trey was always asleep by then, and if he wasn't he never snitched. Tyler would creep through the forest and around the back of town until he arrived at the lake. If he got there first, which he did most of the time, he didn't have to wait long. Kevin would always show up on time every night.
Sometimes Kevin would bring something to do, and occasionally Tyler did, but a lot of the time they just talked or messed around. Tyler showed him the little stories he and Kali had written; Kevin wasn't that impressed, but he seemed more interested when Tyler talked about it than he did when Kali did. Kevin showed him the little carvings he'd done with a pocketknife and some sticks, and he taught Tyler how to do it, although when Tyler cut himself Kevin immediately stopped and helped Tyler wash it in the sink behind the church. Tyler's favourite, though, was when they'd take Kevin's lighter and burn stuff. He didn't know why he loved it so much- the dancing flames were just so beautiful, enticing, warm and wonderful, a destruction that created beauty as it worked. It reminded him of running through the forest, holding Kevin's hand, the freest he'd ever felt.
"I'm turning twelve next week," Kevin told him one day. They had a few leaves burning, nothing special; it was right by the lake, so if anyone came they could kick water over it and it'd be fine. Nobody ever did come- they'd seen other kids sneaking around, but the lake was their spot.
Tyler sticks out his tongue. "Ew. I don't turn twelve until August."
Kevin pushes his hair behind his ear. "What're you gonna get me for my birthday?"
Tyler shrugs, chucking another little stick on the fire. It takes a moment to catch alight. "I dunno. You didn't get me anything for my birthday last year."
Kevin blows a raspberry. "You didn't tell me. Shut up."
"I forgot," Tyler shrugs. "We didn't hang out as much then."
"We should've," Kevin retorts. "I dunno, what do you want for your birthday? You tell me and I'll get it for your birthday. And then I'll tell you what I want and you get it for me."
Tyler nods. "I mean it depends what you want, 'cause it's only if I can get it."
"You can give me what I want," Kevin says. "What do you want?"
Tyler wants a lot of things. He wants his own room he doesn't have to share with Trey. He wants a lot of money so he can buy whatever food he wants. He wants a lot of people to like him. He wants Trey to feel safe to do whatever he wants. He wants chocolate and for his dad to leave and for everything to be fine. He wants to set fire to everyone that hurt them.
"Would it be weird if what I wanted was kinda for you?"
"What do you mean?" Kevin asks, confused.
"You remember how you gave me the lighter a long time ago? I set fire to Kali's dad's bible and it was kinda really freeing and it made her really happy and I liked that. I want to do something like that for you."
Kevin stares off into the distance. Not the answer he expected. "My dad's shed," he says.
"What?"
"We could burn his shed."
"We're gonna burn your dad's shed?"
"Yeah. We can do it now if you want. And then you can give me my present."
Tyler stands up and kicks dirt at the fire; the darkness closes in when he does that, but he doesn't mind. "What present do you want?"
Kevin stands, eyes following Tyler closely. His green irises glitter in the dark. "You'll see."