Tyed - Chapter 50: Chapter 50

The game progresses fine, and at the end there's no clear winner; it goes on until Tyler is struggling to pay attention, Sev's given up long ago, and it seems Kuro's the only one keeping reasonable pace anyway. It ends when Kuro wins a round and says, "have we all given up yet?"
Tyler wondered if Colby was bothered by what he said. Colby seems bothered every time Tyler says that. He's been quiet, focussing on his friends more. Tyler likely embarrassed him. He'll take that explanation.
"I have," Colby admits. "Can someone explain the colours?"
And with the game over, Tyler can explain it. He lists off every rule, and although he starts to forget them halfway through the list and has to be reminded, he did at one point grasp them all.
"That's devious, putting a rule on numbers but not face cards. You're good at this game," Rye tells Tyler. "You've never played it before?"
"Not this game. I'm just good at figuring out unspoken rules," Tyler shrugs, yawning. "Sorry for being weird," he adds lowly, looking at Colby, who's working hard not to show any reaction at all to him, other than just looking at him, emptily. Cool.
Rye actually laughs. "You're fine. I hope we didn't drag you away from your friends for too long."
"Oh, shit." Tyler blinks, turning around as though he can see through the door behind him. "Nancy. I actually kind of did bring friends here and then dump them."
"You should probably go and see them then," Rye remarks, "but thank you so much for this."
"Anytime," Tyler says, standing up and gesturing over his shoulder at the door, meeting Colby's eye. Colby gets the hint and stands up, following him out. "Thank you. It was nice to meet you guys," Tyler manages to say, stumbling only a little on the way out.
The top area where Tyler first spoke to Colby is empty, and Tyler half expects to be pinned against the wall. And he is- or, well, stuck against it anyway, Colby's arms against the wall on either side of him, penning him in. Colby leans in close and kisses him; Tyler's heart responds, as does his body, and he grabs Colby's shirt, pulling him closer, sinking deeper, wanting nothing but this soft passion for the rest of his life.
Colby pulls away, and in Tyler's ear, mutters words far more intimately than the words themselves demand. "Tell me your secret."
Tyler goes cold, and he shakes his head, admitting the truth. "I'm afraid you couldn't love me if you knew."
Colby's finger trail Tyler's chin, pulling his gaze up and magnetically attracting it to his yellow eyes. In one world they're hazel, but in the short glimpses Tyler's seen through them they're always, always yellow; like a wolf's, or like the tips of flames that burn trees and sheds and nightmares but don't hurt your skin if you just dip into them. Cleansing fire was in there.
Colby's voice is low, and his smile intoxicating, far more than the whiskey, the whiskey just a touch darker than Colby's eyes. "Since when," he says, so soft, "did you care about whether or not I loved you?"
Something, somewhere, has broken open. Tyler's not sure he can close it. He doesn't want it open; he's afraid of what someone might see inside. But it's too late.
Tyler answers the question by kissing Colby as hard as he can, losing himself so he doesn't have to think about anything anymore.
How much time does he spend trying not to think?
Colby pulls away again, and despite the regret on his face, he doesn't let Tyler just return to something comfortable and warm and instead he says, "then, at least, let me meet your father. And- and Kali."
Has Colby ever stuttered before? "You don't want to," Tyler says, "meet my father, that is. And I- I haven't met Kali yet."
Colby's hand trails up Tyler's chin and cards through his hair at the back of his head, tilting his gaze up from the ground. "What are you hiding from me?"
And it's that phrase that makes Tyler consider. "You- you can meet Kali after I've met her again, if it's cool with her, I'm not- I'm not trying to hide anything. I haven't seen her in seven years."
Colby's eyes search Tyler's. It's hard not to give up the fugitive secret, if only just to feel heard. "And your dad?"
When fire burns, you can't always contain it, or control it. Sometimes the things you want to set alight don't burn, and sometimes the cleansing fire spreads to the trees around you and there's nothing you can do but wait and see what survives the fire.
Tyler's only option is to let the fire burn, and hope Colby survives it. It's going to spread to Colby sooner or later.
"When he gets out," Tyler promises, sick. "And I guess that's when we can talk about my secret."
They won't have to, more likely than not.
Colby's fingers run along Tyler's jaw, keeping him silent, but not giving him what he wants- an escape from this conversation. "One last thing," Colby says, so soft. "Just one thing. You don't have to say yes."
Tyler nods.
"Some day soon, when you get a chance," Colby says, leaning in closer as though that changes the words he speaks next, "I want you to tell me about Kevin."
—-
The first time is actually the most vivid, because it was the most unexpected.
Tyler's laying in bed at night, Thursday after school. He was at school late, in detention with Nancy for something he technically didn't do, but he was there as she graffitied that locker and didn't stop her, so whatever. Still bullshit, but whatever, and it's not like he was going to just throw her under the bus, anyway.
The internet's only got so many new things. There's all the fresh dank memes, which Tyler barely understands- enough that he recognises them- and then there's these LetsPlayers, or whatever, but Tyler doesn't want to watch some dude play horror games right now. It's dark and he misses Kevin.
He always does, frankly. They see each other a few times a week, but Tyler wants to see him every day. He used to say that one day they'd live together and then they could wake up and be together from the moment they woke up. Tyler would still like that.
He misses Kevin, and so he sends Kevin a text. A simple, wyd?, standard as he's learned from his friends at school. It was the main way they started conversations. Text was hard to get used to, harsh; they didn't speak so much anyway. They could speak about anything, but what Tyler loved about hanging out with Kevin is that he didn't feel the need to prove it. They were as comfortable with each other as they were with their own thoughts. Tyler knew everything that was going on in Kevin's head already; he didn't need to be told.
So he thinks, anyway, as he sends the wyd.
He scrolls YouTube looking for something to watch. He checks his messages; Kevin hasn't opened it. That's a little odd, and Tyler thinks something might be up, but perhaps Tyler is overreacting. Just because he usually answers his messages within, like, a minute doesn't mean anything is wrong if he doesn't.
Feelings, though, don't care about what is logical, and they won't listen no matter what you tell them. Here's the thing; an emotion, worry, is a turn of your stomach, a lingering thought. It's insistent, but not urgent. It wants to be heard, but you can shut it out.
Something is screaming inside Tyler. Something is urgent. And he sends another message. And another.
They're not being read. So perhaps Kevin has notifications turned off? Unlikely, but possible. Maybe he finally started caring about getting detention for having his phone in class and decided to turn them off so he wouldn't forget to do it at school. Maybe Kevin left his phone in another room? If so, what the hell could he even be doing? He's as glued to it as most kids their age. Maybe he's playing a game and he's super immersed. Maybe, maybe, maybe...
There's no answer to Tyler's call.
Tyler's listing off reasons he's overreacting as he's putting on his shoes, ready to leave.
He walks first, and then runs. The whole time his mind is out of sync with his body; trying to tell it that it will be fine, it must be fine, Kevin must have just run out of battery or something. His mum must've confiscated his phone, he must've dropped it, he must have heard the notification, heard the ringtone and is searching his room for where he put it to answer, to call back, to explain himself.
But no thought explains why Tyler feels so fucking bad. And he knows that the feeling of dread and fear in his stomach has no physical connection to why Kevin did not answer; and yet, it kind of does. He feels it even if he doesn't know it. There is a connection, there is a reason, and even if there's a good reason Kevin hasn't answered Tyler's text like he has every single time before there's still a reason Tyler's running to his house right now, vaulting the fence, climbing up to his window.
Tyler tries, first of all, knocking. No sense in making a fool of himself if there is a good reason. He doesn't wait long for an answer, though, unlocking it the way Kevin taught him from the outside and shoving the curtains open. He considered calling, but he's so glad he didn't waste the time when he sees the room.
Well, he doesn't see the room. The edges of his mind conclude that the room is oddly clean and that's all he actually perceives of that. Kevin's on the floor, and that's what Tyler sees, tunnel vision until he's clambered over Kevin's bed and is on the floor beside him.
First impressions are bad, Kevin lying face-down, fully dressed, hair hiding anything that could help Tyler. Tyler goes to turn him over in a rush, to see if he's breathing, but he smells vomit and instinct stops him from turning Kevin onto his back; it only occurs to him much later that if he had laid him flat, Kevin might've choked on his vomit when in that moment, with that movement, Kevin throws up again. Tyler's got him on his side as he does so, and Tyler gives no regard to the fact that his jeans and the floor are both stained beyond repair; although he definitely notices that the vomit's mostly red. Kevin's eyes are closed, yet moving so furiously that Tyler could swear they were trying to break out of his eyelids. At least he's fucking alive.
Tyler's hands are shaking as he holds him, and he barely knows what he's saying, what he's even thinking. He knew it. He yells for Kevin's mother at the top of his lungs, unable to stand; instead, he brushes Kevin's hair out of his face, makes sure he can breathe, wishes he could immediately diagnose the problem and figure out how to save him.
He knew he'd have to do this, to save him. Maybe he didn't know years ago, and truly he can't say he knew that he knew until minutes ago when that feeling kicked in; but he did know.
He's known for a while that Kevin's not happy. And it's not like getting out of Darkfilly Copse was bad, that's not it at all.
But Kevin doesn't have anything to live for anymore.
Kevin's mum breaks down the door, all the emotion in Tyler's words perfectly, unwittingly conveyed. Her scream conveys those same emotions right back. Tyler's not sure if he's really feeling them, if any of this is really happening. All he can latch onto is that Kevin isn't dead, that there's no proof yet that he's dying.
That's the best he can say, though. No proof yet that he's dying.
"Call the ambulance," he manages to say. He's pretty sure the rest of the night is a dream; he remembers rubbing the same part of Kevin's arm as if that would help, he remembers holding Kevin's hand with his finger surreptitiously on Kevin's wrist to make sure there was still a pulse, he remembers the ambulance ride and trying to be calm because the paramedics were, even though he knew they might just be keeping it up just for him. They did that, acted. These ones were good at giving him nothing to go off of.
Kevin's taken away from him at the hospital and Tyler spends the rest of his life in the waiting room before they let him see his boyfriend. See him, meaning there's something to see, something to see, so Tyler doesn't even mind that it's past one AM at that point and he's tired and might collapse in Kevin's arms, if they were strong enough to hold him. He doesn't even mind.
Kevin's mum is there too, of course, and she's the one who talks to the doctor, hears medical information, whatever. Tyler's not even sure how he's allowed here but he's not about to complain. Kevin's lying in the bed, his face at least clean, asleep. There's just one tube in his arm, the little needle they stick for fluids, which somehow Tyler finds encouraging. He doesn't need medicine, just water. He comes to his side, hand on his wrist just like in the ambulance, needing to feel Kevin's pulse beneath his own fingers.
"He's going to be okay," are the only words of the doctor's speech that Tyler cares about.
And Tyler watches him, makes sure of that himself, as though his presence makes the difference; it does for Tyler, at least. He finds himself waking with a stiff neck, Kevin's mum across from him still sleeping in the same position that gave him that pain. He looks over at Kevin before anything else, and where he last remembered him, Kevin is there, eyes blearily open.
"You scared me so much," Tyler mutters, leaning down and kissing Kevin's fingers where they interlock with his own. Kevin laughs a little, and oddly enough, the smile holds.
"I'm sorry," is what Kevin says. "I'm sorry for upsetting you. I don't want you to be upset."
"Then don't do that." It's not a well planned attempt, and that's when the smile falls. Tyler wonders how real it was. "Kev, we got plans, yeah? You gotta be there for them or it won't be the same."
"How'd you know I did it on purpose?" Kevin mutters, eyes fluttering shut again. His head lolls against his pillow and he opens his eyes to the roof, to the fluorescent lights, bright and white like the lights of heaven would be. Did Kevin think he was headed there?
"Well, you just admitted it," Tyler mutters. "I mean... why, though? Why? What's-" Tyler takes a deep, burning breath- "what's missing, Kev?"
The silence is long. Kevin stares at Tyler's hand, interlocked with his, and turns their fingers over, as though counting them, as though he needs to check that they're all there.
Tyler knows to wait, and eventually, Kevin does speak. Kevin gives him his answer.
"Nothing," Kevin says. "Nothing is missing. I have everything. So what am I supposed to do next?"
"Move out, get a job, live with me," Tyler chokes finally; "spend every day together and then we'll die together like we were meant to."
"And then what? Three things until we die?"
"No, lots of things. We can travel. We can learn a lot of things. We should write a book together, or make internet videos, or we can volunteer and help people, or we can get rich and make money for charities and stuff. We could make music, you're a good singer. There's so much to do, Kevin, too much to do that we won't get to do it all."
"But what's the point? What's the end goal?"
Tyler stares at him. "Being happy together?"
Kevin stares back. "And can we ever really be happy? Or is it just gonna be like it's always been where we find these moments where we're happy like this but most of the time it sucks? Am I just meant to keep going through the most of the time where it sucks to be happy in these short moments that're gone so quickly?"
Tyler squeezes his hand. "Yes."
Kevin sighs, looking back to the roof, the lights that might be what heaven would be. "Alright."
At the time Tyler took it to be agreement, which might be how Kevin wanted him to take it. He later considered it a simple acknowledgement of Tyler's point. To agree to disagree.