Tyed

chapter fifty two

tw suicide - and also spoilers for shawshank redemption I guess

Tyler's known Kevin his entire life.

They weren't friends at first, of course, but there was a camaraderie, invisible while there, among the kids at Darkfilly Copse. It was difficult; pulled this way and that, brought up to replicate the abuse they'd endured, most of them spent at least up until puberty looking for comfort from each other, as it could rarely be found in the adults around them. Some of them had good mothers, but they were the exception.

Kevin was, honestly, very lucky. He wasn't targeted by his dad in the same way Tyler was by his, and he had a decently good mother, which Tyler did too, but couldn't be said of all the kids. That might've been the initial hurdle it took them a little time to get over. It wasn't like hell was any different for Kevin, outside of that one fact. They just didn't know it was hell at the time, and Kevin having the best seat in hell changed things.

But what made Tyler feel different about Kevin was when they tried to run away. Kevin, Tyler, Trey and Kali; they almost made it down the river, and before they got caught, Tyler and Kevin ran. They ran together, hand in hand, through the woods that Kevin had tried to burn to give them a chance. And so Tyler just remembers running through fire, feeling hope in his heart for the first time in his life, as it beat out of its chest, unclear if it was adrenalin or Kevin. It kinda turned out to be both.

And so that idea of being forged by fire together meant ever so much more for Tyler and Kevin. They kept meeting up at night, when they shouldn't go anywhere, lighting up the night with flame to keep their hearts beating like they had that day. Adding fuel to the fire. Making them beat harder.

It was stupid, the way they fell in love, really. Tyler can't think of a moment, not today; all he really remembers is loving Kevin. When Kevin kissed him for the first time, he remembers that. A bond that formed from something more than the pain around them; something that was new, and different, and not at all very abundant in Darkfilly Copse. It was felt in that moment. Tyler knew it, and he knew in that moment he'd always feel it. And he was right.

They couldn't go long without each other. Tyler used to wake up thinking of Kevin and spend his days waiting for the next time he'd see him. When Darkfilly Copse imploded, it imploded with them side by side, and one thing about the burns they got is it melted them together, and tearing them apart was painful.

It was luck that they weren't apart for long. No, not luck; Kevin's heart simply demanded as much as Tyler's did, almost more, demanded to be near Tyler, and he did anything he had to. Tyler would've done the same if it had been left a moment longer, perhaps, and it's that thought Tyler goes back to when he wonders if Kevin abandoned him.

Kevin wouldn't abandon him. If Kevin didn't love Tyler, he wouldn't have tracked him down and ran to his door; that's what Tyler tries to tell himself when he wakes up from a nightmare that's just repeating that summer evening over and over. He has those nightmares sometimes more often than he has nightmares of Darkfilly Copse. When he's slept alone for too long, his mind strays to why he's alone, and he fears those memories almost more than he fears his father. When he wakes up in the throes of a tangled horror brought on by a one-night stand he'll forget and hardly liked, at least he's not dreaming of what was left when Kevin was gone.

Tyler's experience of the new world was good, really- it was slow at first, but exponentially it grew, the way he'd notice something he'd never known before about the world and he'd want to learn it, expanding his knowledge and decrying all the old things he'd learned. Learning what he wanted, growing comfortable in who he was. Throwing himself into every new thing, every new person and experience. Tyler was never, not once, afraid of the new. That was how he'd ended up in that club that evening; it was how he slept in so many beds and tried so many hobbies and jobs he quickly threw away. Tyler was bad at not doing something new, he was bad at recognising what he had, and appreciating it while he had it.