Tyed - Chapter 35: Chapter 35

Tyler doesn't sleep great that night. He has flashbacks to Sandys' house on fire and struggles to find something to cling onto that will give him a certain future.
A certain future is something he never had. It's still not something he has. It feels better to have Colby, to have someone to trust and hold onto who keeps his promises, but is it really going to last that much longer?
The next morning is a Monday and Tyler decides to skip uni the moment his eyes open. He just cuddles in close to Colby's chest. His restless sleep meant the sun woke him up, but at least he slept. He often spends nights alone without sleeping at all.
Colby's hands absentmindedly run over Tyler's back in his sleep. Tyler's eyes aren't open, but he leans into the touch. He's found a warm place where it feels like he belongs, and he wouldn't give that up or leave it for the world.
It's not long before Colby's phone starts to buzz, though. He begins to stir, and Tyler issued a soft moan of complaint, nuzzling into his neck.
"Mmm," Colby mutters, shuffling Tyler to the side and reaching out to look at his phone. Tyler refuses to move more than is necessary. "Oh, doll, come on. Time to wake up, baby. I've gotta go to work."
Tyler pressed a gentle kiss to his neck. "No you don't," he mutters, trying not to grin.
"You're awake," Colby says, and Tyler can't control his grin. "Come on. I gotta get up."
Tyler finally slides slightly to the side, so that Colby can shuffle out and get out of bed. Tyler cracks an eye open, watching as Colby turns around for a quick moment and locks eyes with Tyler, grinning a little, before walking into the bathroom, leaving the door open behind him.
Tyler considers following him. He doesn't consider it long before deciding to do it.
Tyler almost gets into the shower with his collar on, only just remembering to take it off when Colby stares at it, saying nothing. Tyler rests it on the counter and looks at Colby for an invitation.
"You're tempting me to be late for work," Colby remarks as he opens the shower door.
Tyler steps on under the water. "Really? You'll put off going to work for me?"
"Well, no," Colby says, and eyebrow raised, "unless you can make it really worth my time."
"Oh," Tyler says, sinking to his knees, "I can."
They don't talk about Scarlett, not yet. They put off the darkness in Colby's past as much as they put off the darkness in Tyler's. It's good to leave that darkness behind, but Tyler knows he won't be able to hide from it forever.
Colby fucked up, and the whole reason he divorced his ex-wife was wrong. He says he doesn't want her back, even in that scenario, but Tyler finds it hard to believe. And he still hasn't told his whole truth.
It doesn't mean nothing, though, that he told Colby that he was the one who burned down Sandys' house and Colby didn't reject him for it. In fact, Colby had done exactly the same thing. While Tyler doubted that his other secrets were also true of Colby, at least he was beginning to see a chance. A chance for Colby to know the truth and still be fine.
Tyler thought about all of this while sucking Colby's dick, and the truth is he preferred the kinky stuff because it meant he didn't have to think a lot.
Sometimes, turning your brain off is the best thing you can do. It was a medicine Tyler needed, and didn't always get.
He goes home later that day, and can't make himself be productive. He stares at a laptop screen with a single answer filled in out of thirty questions, and nearly bashes his head against the screen. It's too early to consider dropping the fuck out of uni, especially with all the wrenches thrown in potential plans. Yet, he kind of wants to. He feels like a tool that's lost its purpose, and that's the awful truth; he was molded for a specific want, a specific need. Born for it and shaped with it for his entire life. It's not what he wants, per se, but how he wants to spend his life is a blurred, mirror-image reflection of the same damn thing, almost. Is this bad for him? Because he can't see a way out.
He can't see himself becoming any fucking thing. Not an engineer, that's for sure.
He finds himself walking into Nancy's room without knocking, without even thinking. "Nancy," he says, a sharp pain in his voice.
She looks a little shocked, gazing up at him from her phone. "Uh, yeah- are you okay, Tyler?"
Tyler cranes his head all around, looking at anything but her. "You and I, we're similarly fucked, right? We never get to be normal."
"Awful way of saying it," she says, "but yeah. My uncle, Liam, Sandys- between the three of them, I'm fucked. And your dad for you."
"Right, right," Tyler nods. "How do you feel about being a nurse?"
Nancy puts her phone down cautiously. "I don't see the correlation. I feel fine about being a nurse?"
Tyler shakes his head. "You feel like it's your purpose?"
"Sorry to break it to you, hon, but we don't have a purpose." Nancy crosses her arms; her nails pull at her sleeve. "We're random noise in the universe. We get to do whatever we want."
Tyler raises an eyebrow. Despite having been an atheist for years, he'd never quite shaken the feeling that he was made, made for a reason. And really, his father had made him for a reason, you could say. He felt like he was defying that purpose, that was all. "You don't feel a purpose?"
Nancy shakes her head. "I feel what I want, I guess. I wanna help people when they're in the shittiest parts of their lives and I'm not, like, wordy enough to be a counsellor or smart enough to be a doctor. So I've made nursing my purpose."
"How do you just do that? Make something your purpose?" Tyler runs his fingers through his hair. His long, beautiful curls that his father used to love and he's never had the courage to cut. "I think about being an engineer and it's just not for me. I won't be a good one. Square peg in a circle hole or whatever."
"So, uh, change majors?" Nancy shrugs. "I'm not seeing where you're coming from."
"I'm coming from, when my mother gave birth to me my father intended to use me for sex just like my mother before me and I feel like that's my fucking purpose, and I've never ever felt like I've managed to get away from that completely. I nearly kissed Tee the other day because I felt like he liked me and it was my purpose to give myself over to anyone who had interest in me, you know? I don't think I've ever rejected anyone immediately. Even people I don't like. It's this insistent urge I have. I can't..."
He trails off as he realises Nancy's staring at him. "Clarify for me," Nancy says, "you didn't, like, say anything to Tee, did you?"
Tyler shakes his head. "It wasn't a thing. I just felt like I was supposed to do it, that's all I'm trying to say. I'm in a committed relationship." Tyler bites his lip. That urge has taken him out of committed relationships before.
"So that's why you cheated on Lachlen?" Nancy raises her eyebrows. "You two seemed so happy as far as I could tell."
"I was. It's just, I don't know, Jack showed up, and I felt like I couldn't say no to him. So I just didn't." Tyler stares at his hands. "And I mean, obviously too late now. I'm not mourning Lachlen anymore- we were happy, but it wasn't special. I didn't properly, fully love him. Not like Kevin, and not like-"
Tyler clenches his fist so hard it hurts, as Nancy says, slowly and cautiously, "...like?"
Tyler can't look at her. Twice now he's almost spilled to her feelings he hasn't admitted to himself. He closes his eyes, his entire body tense, every nerve knowing exactly what he was about to say and not wanting to say it. "You know what the fuck I was about to say," he mutters. He can think it. He can let her know it. He just can't admit it out loud.
"You've known him for what... Eight days, nine?" Nancy hmms to herself. "It takes eight days to fall in love, you know."
"That's probably bullshit," Tyler says, and she shrugs.
"Some people say ninety seconds, or four minutes. Either way... it doesn't have to take long."
"What's your point?" Tyler asks, staring her down now all of a sudden.
She just shrugs. "What's yours? Why'd you come in here?"
Tyler instantly softens, growing red as he tries to find the words to say what he's trying to say, which end up being, "...to ask if you thought I was only with Colby because I didn't know what else to do with my life other than, like, sex."
"I think you answered your own question," Nancy grins with an insufferable smirk, "but some would say maybe it started that way. But, like- look, Tyler, there's a difference between good and bad sex, for us survivors. You realise that, right?"
Tyler shrugs. "I know, but... I'm worried I'm having bad, retraumatising kind of sex and not realising. You know? Like, I was worried about it being my purpose, and I'm not exactly going away from that, am I?"
"Two things," Nancy says. "One. You know bad sex that you do because you feel like trauma is forcing you when you have it. Maybe not before, but after- that sickness that washes over you, that disgust, the need to vomit and cleanse yourself- well, that's how it feels for me. I don't know if it's the same for you." Tyler reels, because he felt that every morning along with a hangover for the year or so he couldn't stop sleeping with the entire city. He felt a ghost of it after he turned away from kissing Tee. "And two. Again, we don't have purposes, but like- it's not hard to make your purpose something else and still date Colby, right? Like... maybe it's just not engineering. You could do the counselling I'm not brave enough to do, or some shit. Maybe your purpose will be a stay-at-home dad or something. Who fucking knows, dude. But it doesn't have to be anything at all. You get to pick your purpose. Take time to decide."
Tyler pauses. He needs a moment to go into his room and think about all that, but he has a feeling he can get somewhere with it. "Thank you," he says, going to the door, before stopping for a moment. "You're sure you don't want to be a counsellor?"
Nancy shrugs. "Already started nursing. Can't be fucked changing."
Tyler sighs. "Well, should I change? Should I quit engineering?"
"You know the answer to that, not me," is all Nancy has to say.
Tyler sleeps even worse that night without Colby. When he wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming out and freezing cold despite the summer heat that surrounds him, he falls back against the bed with a sigh and wishes Colby was here.
No- Tyler wishes he wasn't here. He wishes he was with Colby. This house had seen to many strangers he didn't love, this bed had been shared with too many people Tyler didn't want to wake up next to.
But he did want to wake up next to Colby.
He couldn't say it. The words weren't there. But he knew what it was. It felt instinctual, it had almost slipped out too many times. It was something he'd only ever said in that context- what, once? Just once.
Tyler closes his eyes and imagines that Kevin was here, next to him. The memory of Kevin's face as it was fast asleep, mouth open kinda grossly, slumped and snoring, was magic that Tyler held onto even now.
Except it wasn't the only face he cared to remember anymore. He sees Kevin grinning mischeivously at him and it so easily morphs, without Tyler even thinking, into Colby, smirking down at him. And Tyler's heart begins to race at that moment. He almost feels like he's cheating on Kevin, like he's making a mistake and disrespecting him to fall in love again.
There it is. Tyler clutches his pillow close and begins to cry.
Kevin chose to leave him, technically. It wasn't Tyler, but Kevin could've stayed for him if he really tried, if he really wanted to, and he didn't. It was a selfish decision that Kevin made, and Tyler wants to move on based on that alone. But he can't.
Because what if Kevin hadn't made that choice?
Tyler never would've met Colby at all. A myriad of things could've happened instead, but he and Kevin would still be struggling together in this messy world, and while things would've been hard, it would've been worth it. If Kevin had fought a bit harder to stay, they'd be living together by now, sharing everything as they had been before, and Kevin would've stood by his side to give the finger to his stupid dying father. Kevin's loud voice would've been so comforting. His smell so homely. It would've been a beautiful mess.
But the thing is, it still would've been a mess. They'd be poor and struggling, because Kevin was even flakier than Tyler and horrible with money. Kevin was teetering on the edge of using drugs as a crutch to deal with his pain, and Tyler would've loved him too much to intervene if he had gone down that path. Kevin wouldn't have provided for Tyler, neither the reverse- they were two car crashes that couldn't have possibly built a good life together.
But that's almost worse, because now Tyler feels like he's cheating by not having to live like that. If him and Colby work out- and that's a big if, with pretty ex-wife mother-of-child possibly-wrongly-divorced Scarlett Marie Jackson hanging around- then Tyler has everything. Richer than he could ever need to be, comfortable, not needing to lift a finger, within reach of more therapy or medication if he ever needed it. All things Kevin never got to have.
He thought it might be fairer to Kevin if he had all of that, but lacked the one thing he had had with Kevin. But if Tyler's falling in love with Colby...
He doesn't deserve the happiness.