Tyed - Chapter 68: Chapter 68

Tyler wishes he wasn't here.
He dragged everyone along, so he wouldn't have to go alone. Things got pretty complicated the past week, which Nancy seems to understand, although he wishes she would stop asking if he's okay.
"Yes, I'm fine," he has to keep insisting every time. He's sitting in the passenger seat while Tee drives; he didn't really expect Tee to come. It's not like he ever met the guy. It's not like he would've cared to. Honestly, Tyler's pretty sure he's coming just to drive them, and maybe because Nancy bothered him about it, tried to convince him Tyler needed the support. He wants to buck her off, almost, and that rage is irrational, that's the issue. He's angry at her for trying to look after him, which is really stupid, because it proves he needs looking after. He wants to be okay. He should be okay, shouldn't he?
Except they're pulling up to a god damn funeral and all Tyler can think about right now is Kevin.
He steps out of the car and takes a deep breath of the air, trying to remind himself that it's summer several years after Kevin's funeral, that this is different. But he's wearing the same suit, has that same memory. Eventually, you stop being reminded every day of the pain, you stop thinking about it; but it still hurts just as much when it's brought up to you, when something makes you feel that same pain again. He feels like he's going to walk through that door and see Kevin's body, bruises painted over by the mortician, laid nicely in a coffin in a suit he would've hated.
Tyler hates the suit he's wearing, because it has no personality; it's just that you wear black to a funeral. Kevin would've hated it too, because he always found the suit jackets stifling, uncomfortable; he would've said Tyler didn't look like himself. Colby would've hated it, too, had he got a chance to see it. At first, Tyler would've thought Colby would hate it because it was cheap and didn't fit as well as it should; but Tyler knows now that Colby would've hated it because of how uncomfortable Tyler was. Colby was more than just someone with money, and it sucked, how much Tyler had come to care in- what, a month? That's how long it's been since they met.
Tyler wishes he was here.
Well, maybe not in this specific place during this specific event; rather, Tyler wishes he himself wasn't here. Wishes he was with him instead.
Tyler closes his eyes and breathes sunlit air like it'll warm him inside. It could be worse, he tries to tell himself. It could be so much worse. Right? He could start listing ways it could be worse. Or maybe he'll just force himself to walk into that building and pretend everything is okay and stop thinking. Weirdly enough, he doesn't really want to think right now.
He finds a hand on his arm. "How you feeling, cowboy?" Nancy asks for what must be the fifth time.
"I'm still fine," Tyler says with a stiff scowl. "Why do you keep asking?"
"Because you're shaking even more now," Nancy says, gently leading him towards the door. "It's fine to have complicated feelings, you know."
"My feelings aren't complicated. My feeling is that I want to go home."
Nancy just pats him on the elbow and makes sure he's still walking towards the door.
It's not a huge funeral. Tyler supposes that if most of your family hates you when you die, not that many people are gonna show. Honestly, Nancy and Tee are padding the numbers. Tyler sees Trey standing alone, looking out the window. Their mother is here, standing next to Scarlett, wearing the same long gloves she always wears, but this time in black; it's almost comical. Saxon bothered to show, probably because he had nothing better to do. There's a handful of others here, mostly people Tyler has met once if ever; those memories are beyond distant now. Tee looks honestly kind of uncomfortable.
"I thought Kali was going to be here," Nancy mutters to herself.
"She might be coming later," Tyler shrugs. "Or maybe she just didn't want to come to his funeral."
Tee sighs. "I didn't. Yet here I am."
"Because someone had to drive us," Nancy remarks sideways.
"And because I'm a good friend," Tee hisses back, but Tyler's already walking away, towards his brother by the window.
He puts his hand on Trey's shoulder, and Trey jumps. Tyler immediately starts apologising under his breath, but Trey just shakes his head. He looks tired.
"Hi, Ty," Trey smiles a wobbly smile. "How are you- you- coping?"
Tyler shrugs. Because he has no idea what the truthful answer to that question is. "I'm not sure it's fully hit me yet. How about you?"
Trey shrugs. "Perfectly fine, I- I think. But, um- can I- can I be...? I'm just... thinking."
"Oh, can you be alone? Sure, buddy. Sorry. I'll come back later." Tyler gives him a soft smile, and Trey goes back to the window. Tyler wonders how Trey feels. Considering Tyler feels... worse.
He'll admit it. He's admitted worse. He won't admit it out loud, won't admit how awful it is that his blank expression isn't quite the most accurate expression of his emotions. After everything, he wants to be fine. He really, logically, should be fine. Surely things are no different than they were the past few years; surely this should be normal?
But he's standing at this funeral, alone, and he can't name the emotion he's feeling- but it's not empty nothingness.
He leaves Trey alone, though, and goes instead to stand with his mother and her- whatever her and Scarlett are at the moment. He's not sure why they came together- to pad the numbers, or because the secret's out, or because the support was genuinely needed?
They're talking quietly as he approaches. "-it's a hard thing," Carol is saying, "a lot to figure out with all of it, you know?"
"I feel like I've spent so long trying to figure it out," Scarlett answers, and it's clear they're not talking about anything relevant; they stand over a dead body, carefully painted and propped up to try and make him look like he did in life, but always missing something, and they're talking like they don't see him. It's fair enough; it's not like he's there. Just some wax statue of him, really. Wax. Tyler imagines it dripping, melting.
As Tyler approaches, Scarlett's words die in her throat, and she turns to look at Tyler, sensing him over her shoulder. The two women seem to almost subconsciously step aside, giving Tyler room to look at the coffin, to examine his face. To look for life where there is none, just to check. Like maybe somebody just didn't notice that he didn't quite die; maybe there's a chance this era isn't over. Why is Tyler looking for that chance?
Tyler has seen bodies right after death, and he's been to funerals before. He's seen his own boyfriend's body right after death and a week later at the funeral. The stillness, the unnatural look, the glass eyes- closed now- they appear not because of any funeral preparation, the mortician does not create the look of death. It happens the moment a soul leaves a body; a slow fading of life stiffens limbs forever. Tyler has never understood how you could look at someone and not be sure if they were dead. You know. You know. Even when the warmth hasn't quite left, you look at them, and you know they have died. You can take a dead body and you can make a statue of the living person out of it; but you cannot bring them back.
He's gone. For good. Forever. As permanently as one can be.
All of this thought process means that it makes sense to him, but nobody else, when Tyler says, "he's dead."
Maybe it's not so crazy, because his mother gently touches his shoulder, and says, "how are you feeling?"
And he feels like he can admit it to her. Maybe not Nancy or Tee, but she might understand. "I feel... sad. I do. But I'm relieved. I am. At least- I don't know. It's a lot to process."
"Eternity is a long time," Scarlett says quietly. "It's hard to believe someone can be gone forever. Regardless of who they are."
Tyler nods, surprised but unreactive to that surprise. "You've seen a lot of death?"
Scarlett shakes her head slowly and smiles wryly. "Not as much as you."
Tyler takes a deep breath. He's having a hard time looking away from the body in the coffin. His bruised skin has been covered by makeup; his jaw looks clenched from the way they wired it shut. It makes Tyler clench his own jaw. "Sorry for interrupting your conversation. It seems-" he stops. Restarts. "You guys have a lot to figure out."
"We all do," Carol shrugs.
"I ran off before I really found out what was happening, but- well, you guys do whatever works and let me know if I can ever help." Tyler swallows thickly. Why is his throat so stiff? "Sorry for running off."
Carol shrugs and laughs. Scarlett shakes her head again, still smiling. "Can you believe it?" she mutters under her breath.
"Believe what?"
"That- that Colby punched an old man in the face," Scarlett says, and for some reason Tyler couldn't really imagine those words coming out of her mouth, but she says it so casually. "You heard about that, didn't you, Tyler?"
"Yeah," Tyler nods. "It's a shame I missed that. It was, uh- that was the last I saw of him. Sad that the last couldn't have been that punch. It would've been pretty funny."
"Oh, it was not funny, not at the time. Knowing what I know now, understandable." Tyler doesn't expect Scarlett to say that, of all things.
There's a pause, where Tyler can't stop examining the body. The suit doesn't quite fit. Tyler's not sure if nobody noticed, or if nobody cared.
"I think I'm sick of lying," Scarlett announces, for whatever it's worth. And Tyler nods. He got sick of lying, too. "I'm sorry, Tyler. For not knowing what I want and taking it out on you."
"Apology accepted," Tyler says with a little smile. "It's a new era, you know." Or it will be. As soon as he can accept that the body laying in front of him is not coming back to life. Will never have any influence on his life again. That he is dead.
And they sit in the silence, looking down at this body, the three of them- until suddenly there's this weight on Tyler's shoulder, a man who can't quite carry his whole weight on his own- and for a moment, he's brought back to his mother's house, where his father snuck up on him without warning. And he almost turns, almost punches, almost panics.
"Has it hit you yet?" asks the last voice Tyler was expecting to be here. Well- besides the deceased.
Tyler spins around and almost knocks him over. Carol tries to catch him, almost knocks the sling, but it turns out he wasn't that unstable on his feet anyway; it's nothing wrong with his legs, but rather a wooziness from far too much medication, or so Tyler understands it. And looking at him, Tyler nearly starts crying. Sure, whatever minor sadness he had couldn't make him cry, but this, somehow, is almost gonna do it.
"I thought you said you weren't going to be able to make it," Tyler says, and Colby's little smile is still so disarming. Tyler wants to throw his arms around him, to drag him into himself; but he resolves for a gentle hug, slipping his arms around his waist, careful not to put too much weight in the wrong places.
"Be-" Colby hisses- "be careful."
"Sorry, I was trying to," Tyler responds, a little sheepishly. Colby has already talked on more than one occasion about how annoying it is that he has to keep his arm in a sling, even though his arm is fine, and it's his collarbone that's broken; although it was his concussion that worried both of them far more, although they wouldn't say it.
He's not quite dressed for a funeral, but he could get away with it, a white collared shirt being probably close enough by most standards, and his face is still bruised enough for sympathy anyway. "How are you feeling?" Carol asks him, and it seems like some tension between them has evaporated- even though the man in front of them allegedly had nothing to do with it. Well, he didn't, but Tyler thought he just had a way of poisoning the air.
"Well, I can look at bright lights again, so I suppose I've got that going for me," Colby answers.
"Do you know what happened yet?"
"Not exactly. The insurance company says I got hit from the front side- quite possibly someone speeding to overtake, they said was their guess. I don't exactly remember. Turns out, you can get the memories knocked out of you," he says with a grin.
Tyler remembers. The pain, he's not reliving it, but he remembers that in that moment of silence it felt like he had climbed through a window and seen a body again, and he was sure he was cursed, for everyone he loved to die; frantically begging to hear Colby speak, hearing a faint groan, not being able to navigate into his phone to call the ambulance, not wanting to hang up on Colby to do it anyway, the slight relief at hearing the sirens through the phone, but still worrying, because Colby wasn't able to speak to him. He felt like he was standing on the ledge and watching Colby fall.
Of course, it wasn't as bad as all that; a killer concussion, a broken collarbone, and quite a few bruises didn't kill him. Tyler blames himself, to an extent- yes, someone else hit Colby, but he was distracted, rushing, probably speeding, and Tyler's pretty sure he didn't bother putting a seatbelt on- if Tyler had called again earlier, maybe Colby wouldn't have rushed, maybe he wouldn't have even been hurt; and it still feels like his fault.
But Colby presses a kiss to his head right now, in this moment, and Tyler can't worry too much about anything but the present.
"How did you get here?" he asks with a frown, because Colby is explicitly not allowed to drive with a broken collarbone, and... "...and why did you come?", because Colby was at the hospital last time Tyler checked, having gone in not too long ago for some horrible headache related to a concussion- which was a bad sign, and Tyler had been worried, although Colby seemed fine now.
"Allegedly, a headache of some kind is normal," Colby shrugs, "so when it had calmed down past the pointed I needed the strong stuff, they just sent me home. And I figured I may as well stop by here. Don't worry, I caught a taxi, I wouldn't drive."
Tyler leans into him, eyes closed, breathing his scent. He had thought, for too long of a moment, the long walk home without the salvation he thought he had- he had thought a different funeral could, possibly, have been in his future. In some alternate universe, he would be standing in front of Colby's coffin; still with Scarlett and quite possibly his mother also, staring at Colby's body, trying to find the human beneath the wax sculpture. Instead, Tyler looks at his father's body.
His father, who is gone, who left behind an empty shell. Tyler is not sad because he misses him; that was never going to happen. But Tyler's feelings are complicated, and he can pin down some kind of sadness, can try to pull it out of the complex web of feelings; what is he missing?
Time is moving on, life is changing, and Tyler is sad because the past still has some hold on him.
He's sad because it hasn't fixed everything. The empty shell in front of him can never touch him again; but even when he was gone for years, Tyler was not completely free of his grip. His death did nothing his imprisonment didn't do, and that is what Tyler is realising. He is still beholden to his past.
But he holds onto his future, grasps at Colby's shirt, makes sure he can feel his warmth under his fingers; his tangibility is impossible to ignore. Tyler has a past, yes; but he also has a future.
He's going to get to be someone. It's something that was always the case, that he always knew, that he knows would be true even if it was Colby's funeral he stood at. But he wouldn't understand it. He wouldn't have hope for the life he had coming, the person he was going to be. That person didn't seem like they had a chance to be happy. Like it would ever happen.
Tyler feels like he has a chance. He knows it's not some permanent state, that you don't reach "happy" and that's the end of it; it's about the moments when you take a breath, look around you, and realise everything's okay.
Tyler feels like everything's okay.