Tyed - Chapter 62: Chapter 62

Colby feels cold. Tyler takes his arm walking up the door, but it's stiff. He looks up at him, really just searching for an explanation- as if he doesn't already know it- and instead seeing Colby forcefully soften, to let him take his arm. Tyler's not sure he intended the puppy dog eyes, but he's not going to complain about getting what he wanted. He's going to complain about everything else, though. He's pretty sure that's the first and last mercy he's going to get today.
Tyler knocks on the door and considers faking a heart attack. Wouldn't be too hard. If he just stops trying to calm his breathing, the panic attack would come on its own, and from there's an easy way out of this.
But not forever. And Colby already heard about Scarlett.
So Tyler knocks on the fucking door.
He immediately opens his mouth and stumbles over the words. "I hope I didn't tell you that just for her not to be here," he laughs, like it's funny, and it might be if Tyler didn't look at Colby to see him looking down at the ground, almost wide-eyed, expression just blank enough that Tyler isn't certain it's fear. His best guess would be apprehension. Because Tyler's just turned this from his battle that Colby's here to support into a fight that concerns both of them.
Not that it's a fight. It's not. It's going to be just a family discussion that Tyler would rather die than deal with. He'd prefer a fight.
Tyler's mother opens the door, and immediately Tyler knows that something is sure as hell fucking odd. She's put effort in to try and look like she hadn't put effort in; she's got a button up shirt and a white sweater that's tucked into carefully pressed brown pants in such a way that's meant to look like it was done without much thought, but is clearly far too even to be accidental. Her hair is in a neat ponytail with a fringe swooped out and neatly tucked away, and her light makeup is still obvious to someone who's used to seeing her wear none. Tyler has this sinking feeling that he was absolutely right and Scarlett is here as he expects her to be.
Carol looks at Colby. "Oh, uh, hello." She swallows thickly. "It's good to see you again, Colby. Will you two bear with me for just one-"
"Scarlett's here, isn't she?" Tyler has no time for bullshitting around. "You told me she'd be here."
And that cuts Carol's bullshit short too. "You didn't tell me you'd invite her husband, now didya?"
"Ex-husband," Colby corrects tersely.
Carol nods to that. "I'm sorry, you're right. Look, this is- this is all very awkward, isn't it?"
"We don't exactly know what's going on," Tyler says, a half-truth. He doesn't know. He's just fairly certain that his educated guess is in fact exactly correct. "So why would it be awkward?"
"Just wait here," she mutters and closes the door on them.
"Real subtle, you are," Colby sighs. "You can't really approach any situation with tact, can you?"
"What tact does this situation deserve?"
"Tact that would've prevented everyone from getting pissed off immediately. I'd tell you to shut up and let me talk for us, but I think you know exactly what's going on and I'd just make an ass of myself. Why did you invite me here? What are we even doing, Tyler?"
"Trust me, I don't wanna fucking be here either. I- it's selfish."
"What?"
"It's selfish."
"I heard that. I fucking know it's selfish. I just want to hear what exactly you mean."
"I mean, I invited you here 'cause I'm fucking selfish. I knew- or thought, I'm not so certain anymore- that Scarlett was trying to get you back, and- and when I knew she was involved with someone else I needed you to see it to believe it."
"I didn't fucking choose her, did I, Tyler? I chose you."
"Yeah, but you've known her for years, and you've known me for weeks, and like- look at me. Look at my life. Do you want this? Is this what you're looking for in a relationship?"
"This- this bullshit, lying to me to trick me into this, I'm sure as fuck not looking for that."
Brick to the chest. Even though it's just what he wanted, the reaction he was provoking, he had hoped against hope to be told it was okay. "What?"
Colby sighs, and it turns into a groan of frustration, running his hands through his hair and looking away. "I didn't mean it like that. Calm down. I meant don't do this shit."
"Don't tell me to calm down. This shit- this shit is my life-"
"I'm talking about your actions, not anything you are. Just start trusting me for a second, perhaps, and-"
"You think I don't trust you? I trust you more than I trust myself-"
"Clearly not-"
Tyler can't do this. He's at least a little bit sure he didn't just get broken up with, but it feels like it. Feelings on a hair-trigger, he doesn't have time to figure out how he feels about all this- he's not given a chance. So fuck it; he'll act however feels right, and right now he wants to avoid this conversation, although he still feels this weird magnetic attraction to the house. He's not finished here. He'd just rather be arguing with his mother than Colby.
Oh, he knew this was coming; and it really is as bad as all that.
He bursts into the house; Carol didn't lock the door, at least. The meat of Colby's sentence is cut off by the sound of the door hitting the stopper with a much louder bang than Tyler expected, but that doesn't cut off his mother's voice in the other room, definitely raised. "-it's not like I knew," she says, halfway to yelling, "why would I plan that-"
"I'm not mad you didn't tell me he was coming," says a voice that Tyler probably wouldn't recognise at first if he didn't know exactly who it must have belonged to. He's mostly heard her quiet, her anger simmering; and she's not yelling at the top of her voice but she's sure loud and angry, a little shrill. "I'm mad because this is how I had to hear that Tyler is your-"
Tyler's moving before he hears his name, towards the sound of voices, barging into the living room. He's aware of many things at once- those words, the sound of footsteps behind him and vocalised sounds of annoyance, the shadows dancing on the walls, this weird feeling of darkness sitting squarely in the middle of his chest, his misery and the knowledge it can only get worse.
And then he makes eye contact with Scarlett, as she says, "...son."
"Weird situation," says a voice behind him, and Tyler feels a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Isn't it, Scarlett?"
At Tyler's best guess, Scarlett is indecisive. When they first met, she seemed to dislike Colby, to fear him in some ways; but then she wanted to get back together with him, or so it seemed. This weird contradiction, possibly making sense in the lens of competing motives, of changing situations in the background. Her primary emotion, as it seems right now, is fear. Not necessarily of Colby specifically, like she's afraid he's going to hurt her- but her eyes flit nervously around the room, taking in every person here like any one of them might attack her at any moment.
"I can hardly believe it," Scarlett says, a snap in her tongue, the words the kind of thing someone would say about a funny coinkydink, except absolutely nothing is funny and nobody is convinced for even half a second that it might be, Scarlett definitively included.
"So are we going to explain things?" Tyler asks; the words come out like Tyler has absolutely anything to explain.
"You could start," Colby says, and in the heavy, soul-crushing silence that follows Tyler's hit with the hard realisation that Colby means him. The others are staring at him. What the fuck is Tyler meant to explain? As if hearing the question, Colby adds, "you're the reason Scarlett and I are in the same room right now. Do you want to explain to them? You knew she would be here, so why did you invite me?"
It feels particularly cruel, a knife twist, in a way Colby may not even realise, to be asked to bare his jealousy in front of his parents. Is that a reasonable request, or is Colby just not thinking? Or is he being as genuinely mean as the twist of his words might suggest?
"Why did you know I'd be here?" Scarlett demands, her gaze suddenly turned to Tyler's mother.
"She didn't tell you what was going on?" Tyler says, incredulous.
"She told me it was important that we discuss things with her children. I thought- you know, if you knew your son was dating my ex husband, wouldn't it have been nice to warn me?"
She's talking to Carol, but something strikes Tyler a second too late. "Children? Is Trey here?"
Saxon gives him a look of almost pity. "He's gone outside. He needed a break."
Tyler needs a break too, but that's not the reason he immediately leaves; doesn't pass go, doesn't say a word. Just walks right past his mother and heads outside to find his brother.
—-
He stayed with his brother the first night when he moved out.
Trey wanted to move out when Tyler did, but things were a lot harder for him. The state could set up housing for him that was semi-independent, and while their mother wasn't forcing him to leave, Tyler could tell that she was generally interested in starting a life, having the adulthood she never got to have. Weirdly enough, Tyler couldn't respect her unspoken, tentative desire to be alone as her son- but when he tilted his head and looked at her more as a sister, not even in the biological sense but in the sense of someone who grew up in the same hell he did- he could understand it. If somehow he had been forced into the same position as her, he imagined he'd have been a much more neglectful parent than she had been. She was a saint, all things considered, although it took Tyler an unfortunately long time to see that.
Trey was never told this directly, but he seemed to pick up on it, even if he never commented on it. Thing was, though, he kind of felt the same- but his anxiety and uncertainty was far worse. He didn't know how to figure things out for himself. It's not that he couldn't cook food for himself if taught- it's that he couldn't Google a recipe to cook and teach himself how to make it. It's not that he couldn't do his own laundry- it's that when given an unfamiliar machine, he would get stuck and usually give up. So you couldn't really prepare him for moving out- he had to be taught things directly, and then always did it that way, and you couldn't teach him every single thing he'd need to know exactly as he needed to know them- it simply wasn't possible. He could live on his own one day, but it would be a long way from now. The hope remained that this would be a good first step.
He was just terrified to take it, as much as he wanted to at the same time. So he asked that he wouldn't have to go alone.
Tyler still hadn't fully unpacked his room at that point- although a more functional person would have- so when he stepped into Trey's room, it almost felt normal, almost felt like his own weird new home, except for the distinct smell of disinfectant. It wasn't a hospital, wasn't even close, but it still smelled like a room that had been recently cleaned, a whole building that was cleaned as often as was regulated and not as often as its residents could be bothered cleaning. Trey didn't have to bring anything; there was a bed, neatly made, with inoffensive and easily cleaned blue sheets, empty bedside tables, and a dresser. That was it, but Tyler supposed that was what you got with these kinds of places. Trey had a few things, personal items like a teddy bear he'd won from a school raffle thing that he silently loved, as well as a tiny monitor he'd be able to use as a TV as soon as Tyler figured out how to set it up for him, things like that. Tyler spent a good portion of that night trying to set that up, and only succeeded after many frustrating attempts. When he sat down, after it worked, Trey didn't thank him or ask him he got it working; instead, he said, "you- you didn't have to... to spend so- so long on that."
Tyler found himself smiling. He laid back on the weird sheets; they weren't plastic, but they felt kind of plastic, in this weird way he found hard to explain. They felt fake, somehow. "Well, I didn't want you to have to worry about it."
Trey thought for a moment, kicking his feet along the ground. "I didn't- don't- didn't want you to do that." Tyler frowned, and Trey added, "I mean- I wanted you to, to spend- to spend time with me?"
His voice was oddly soft when he said it, like he was afraid to admit that, and Tyler realised he was being told not to ignore his brother in favour of fixing his problems. "I didn't do that for you because I didn't want to talk to you, buddy. Don't worry. I'm going to be here all night."
Trey nodded briefly, a wobbly smile on his face. "It's like-" he pauses, and then shakes his head.
"Like what?"
Trey sighs. "L-like... like... like before."
Tyler doesn't understand what he means, until Trey lies down beside him on the bed, at ninety degree angles, and Trey makes this motion with his hands of one above the other, like bunk beds. And Tyler bites his lip with the memories.
"You- you always s-snuck out," Trey mutters, like it was something Tyler was trying to keep from him. Was he? Memories were pretty hazy around most things. Almost everything was something he didn't want to think about; their father, Kevin now that he was gone, religious bullshit that contradicted everything its followers did. Tyler had no idea if he told Trey what he was doing with Kevin. He knew that he knew they were dating afterwards, but did he know that the love started as stupid preteens stumbling around after dark when they knew they'd get the shit kicked out of them if they were caught?
"Yeah," Tyler says instead of acknowledging anything. "Everything about that place sucked, you know, so it was good to pretend I wasn't there."
"Y-you mean our house? I- but me, and Mum-"
"No, no, I don't mean you sucked! No." Tyler curses himself for just assuming Trey would know what he meant. "Darkfilly Copse, I mean. The town, or whatever it was. That's why we tried to leave, remember?"
"Were you- when you, when you left, at night, were you- trying to l-leave?" Implied, heard: without me?
"No, Trey. I would never have left without you. I just... I wanted to feel like I wasn't there. Even though I was. I wanted to feel like I did when we finally got out, you know? So I pretended."
"Oh." Trey chews over the thought for a moment. "It- it wasn't all bad."
Tyler finds himself tensing. What does he expect Trey to say, that the beatings were okay? No, he doesn't expect that at all- maybe it's just that he categorically wrote off everything and doesn't want to hear otherwise. Or perhaps Trey is just forgetting how awful it was. Despite those thoughts, Tyler finds himself daring to ask, "...how so?"
"I-I had y-you," Trey says, "and Mum was- is- was always n-nice. We had g-good friends. It wasn't- it wasn't the place I don't think. It was- it was- h- it was..." Trey trails off. He can't even say the pronoun. But Tyler knows what he's trying to say.
"You're right," Tyler mutters. "He made the whole place bad. At least, that's how it felt. But you're very, very right, Trey. We had each other, and Mum, and good friends. Like Kali and Kevin and all the others. For us, it was just... him."