Work Text:
They meet on a Nintendo blog.
With only three notes—one of which being said blog signal boosting it—the post is a call for a Pokémon battle. I’m probably gonna suck, it reads, but I’m open to any sort of challenge.
Tyler stares at the post, refreshing the page every few minutes. The notes don’t go up; no one wants to battle. Tyler sends the person a message, his fingers twitching as he pecks at the keyboard. you still up for that battle? he asks, and the person opens a chat.
Sure! What game are you playing? I’m Josh
tyler. i have them all, but i’ll battle you from omega ruby
Sweet. Alpha Sapphire for me. What’s your friend code?
The battle isn’t bad. Tyler ends up chewing his thumb down to its quick. It stings and bleeds a little.
Josh does, in fact, end up losing. They’re sending chat messages throughout—mostly Josh commenting on Tyler’s “sick” party.
Tyler is heated, his skin burning. He rolls onto his stomach and cradles his phone to his chest. what other games do you play?
Oh you know, this and that
super smash bros?
Do you wanna play that now?
why else would i ask?
Tyler wins. Again. Josh is blowing up his phone, draining the battery. You’re so fucking good, man
stop sending me messages and you’ll get good too
Tyler smiles. He smiles and smiles.
*
Baby steps.
They exchange gamer tags and, eventually, phone numbers.
Josh texts him good morning every morning and good night every night. For once in his life, Tyler feels wanted.
*
When Tyler is twelve, he gets second-degree burns on three of his fingers. His mother holds his hand under the tap and wipes the tears from his eyes. “You should have let me fix the hot chocolate, honey,” she tells him, an obvious condescending edge to her voice. She treats his burn, and he goes to bed that night without hot chocolate.
His mother had scared him, though it is true the other way around, too. She jumped at the sight of Tyler carrying a mug of scalding water from the microwave. She shouted his name, and he dropped the mug and burned his fingers. “What are you doing?” she asked. “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” Tyler whispers, eyes on the ceiling. He isn’t twelve. He’s twenty, his childhood bedroom the only bedroom he has known. The blankets are from simpler times; they’re old, and the sheets have holes in them. His feet poke through sometimes. He needs to change them.
“What are you doing?” Tyler rubs an eye. “What are you doing? What are you doing?” His fingers curl into a fist. Tyler isn’t twelve. His fingers aren’t burnt. He’s twenty, lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Tyler has not left the house in close to ten years. And his bedroom… Tyler leaves when it becomes absolutely necessary.
“What are you doing?” Tyler pounds his fist into his forehead. “What are you doing?”
*
Josh asks him if he goes to college. Tyler says he does, what about you? Josh goes to college, too, studying music. Tyler had thought about going into music, but…
Josh sends him a question mark. Tyler shakes, having to redo the text multiple times. i don’t think you can do music classes online
Nah, that’d be hard
What are you studying?
biology, i want to work with animals
That sounds cool. I’m a cat person myself
Tyler places his phone face down and ignores the vibrations of incoming messages. He can’t work with animals from his bedroom. In theory, maybe, but not in the real world. Tyler needs to function in the real world, as his mother likes to tell him every other week. It’s getting more frequent now.
She knocks on his bedroom door, sets food on his dresser, and says it. “Tyler, you need to leave. You need to get it together.”
But Tyler ignores her, legs crossed, head tilted back as he jams buttons on his Xbox controller.
“Tyler, when are you going to move out? Tyler, it smells in here. Tyler, have you done your homework?”
Tyler ignores her. He has to. He lies in bed at night and slams his fists against his head. “What are you doing? What are you doing? Dear God, what am I doing?”
*
He blames his parents. They homeschooled him, and it turned into this.
His dad bought him a car once he turned sixteen and offered to teach him how to drive, but Tyler gets sick at the thought of even thinking about going outside, and now the car has a permanent residence in the driveway. His mom drives it every now and then. For the most part, it’s gathering dust, better suited for his siblings. “Give it to my sister,” Tyler says, but it’s still his. Tyler frowns every time he hears car keys.
*
The first time he hears Josh’s voice is late on Friday, during a zombie session of Call of Duty. Josh says, “Fatality,” and then laughs as he dies. Tyler smiles.
Josh thinks Tyler’s voice is cute. “It’s all… high.” And he laughs, and Tyler fixes his headset and giggles, and Josh says, “Now that is adorable.”
Tyler likes Josh.
*
They call each other now.
Tyler’s days have always blended together. Their conversation never ends, just develops natural pauses and breaks. Josh is always up to talk to Tyler, which Tyler appreciates. Josh has no idea how much he means to Tyler.
It’s bad.
It’s really bad.
*
“Can you see me?”
“No, the screen’s black.”
“Maybe we should just FaceTime each other.”
Tyler shakes his head, using the sleeve of his sweatshirt to wipe a smudge from his laptop. “Can’t. My phone charger stopped working, and the replacement is supposed to get here in two days.”
Josh groans, loud, static filling the speakers.
Tyler groans with him, stretched out until they’re harmonizing and laughing.
“Sick,” Josh says. “Can you see me now?”
“What am I supposed to see?”
“Me.”
“I don’t know what you look like.”
Josh laughs. “Oh.” Tyler is on the screen already, sitting on his bed, his eyelids heavy. It’s past midnight on a weekday. The house is quiet, the faint hum of the local radio station coming from a minimized tab on Tyler’s computer. “I know what you look like now,” Josh says, “and I think you look very cute.”
Tyler is tired. He rubs his hands over his face. “Thanks, man. Do you have blue hair?”
On his bed, too, looking even more tired than Tyler, Josh is wearing sweatpants, a cut-off shirt, and a smile. “Yeah, I have blue hair.” Josh sticks his fingers in his hair for good measure, like he needs to check his hair is still blue. “Do you like it?”
“I love it.” Tyler settles onto his stomach. “I love that tattoo. Pretty colors.”
Josh shows it to Tyler, twisting it from all angles. “Do you have tattoos?”
“No,” Tyler says. “Never had the time.”
*
You are actually kinda hot, Josh texts him after their Skype call ends, like ridiculously hot.
And Tyler sacrifices his precious limited battery charge to send Josh, you too man.
*
There are no words to describe what’s going on in Tyler’s stomach. It’s ripping him in half, claws, horns scraping him and tossing him off the side of the mountain. It’s like a burn, but it isn’t second degree, nor any dangerous. Like a sunburn, it’s annoying, inconvenient. Tyler tells himself he needs to stop feeling this way because why would anyone welcome this? Why would someone subject themselves to this agony?
Tyler pounds his fists into his head, grabbing his hair and pulling. He finds it difficult to breathe, and his pillow is a mask, heavy. Not quite suffocating, there is a pressure here; it’s comfortable and warm. Tyler opens his eyes and sees darkness.
When his phone lights up with Josh’s name, he lights up, as well. When his laptop chimes with a Skype call, his heart skips a beat. And when he sees Josh, the world doesn’t make him sick anymore.
*
His mom draws him out of his room. “You got a package,” she says, anxious. The box rests on the kitchen table, suspicious all by itself, the decorations normally set on the tabletop pushed away and some even relocated to the island. “What did you order?” She wrings her hands together, staring at the box and not at Tyler. “It’s from Amazon.”
Tyler grabs scissors from the counter, sliding the blade along the binding, his mother standing too far away. A hand is over her mouth, like she’s expecting something shocking to emerge. What, animal bones? A human skeleton? No, a liver? It’s his new phone charger, though, and her shoulders slump, sighing, eyes closing. She stands there, hand on her mouth, breathing.
Tyler glances at her, the clamshell case of his phone charger creaking in his grasp. “Why do they ship it in such a big box?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. Tears stick to her bottom lashes. “We could have gone out and bought you a new charger.”
“This is easier.” Tyler opens it, the charger new and still molded in the shape it came in. Setting the scissors on the table, Tyler stretches out the cord. It’s longer than his old one. He can lie in bed and keep his phone with ease.
His mother is shaking her head. “How is this easier?”
Tyler looks at her. “What are we having for dinner?”
“We were thinking about going out.”
“Oh. I’ll have leftovers, then.” Tyler goes to his room. He doesn’t eat dinner.
*
She tries drawing him out again the next day. “Tyler, are you hungry?” she asks, and she knows he’s hungry. With no dinner the night before, and no breakfast, Tyler’s stomach is void of anything substantial. But there’s a mini-fridge he keeps by his desk, stocked with Red Bull, Yoo-hoo, and other sugary beverages. He’s drinking a can of Coke now, back to the door, hunched over his laptop. The speakers are playing some top forty pop song, the screen split—one being a word document and the other a video chat with Josh. Tyler and Josh aren’t talking; they don’t even seem to be aware of what’s going on around them. So, Tyler finally hears his mom after her third time asking.
“No, I’m not hungry.” He goes back to his notebook, scribbling an outline for a paper.
“You don’t want to help me cook?”
Josh is looking at Tyler now, glancing over to the left side of the screen, where Tyler’s mom is standing by the door. Tyler stares at Josh. “No, Mom.”
“Who’s that?” She hovers over Tyler’s shoulder, leaning in to take a better view of the laptop screen.
“Josh,” Tyler says. Josh waves.
“How’d you meet him?”
“Online. We play games together. He’s not very good.”
Josh shakes his head. “Shut up.”
Tyler smiles.
His mom pats his shoulder, her thumb rubbing into his shirt. “Well, I’m glad you’ve made a friend.” Then, “Have you finished your homework?”
“Doing it now.”
“Should you be talking to Josh if your homework isn’t done?”
Tyler blinks, looking ahead at Josh again. “We’re helping each other.”
Josh picks up a textbook and shows it to Tyler’s mom, post-it notes a plenty sticking from the pages. Josh is a good student.
Tyler turns to his mom, swiveling in his chair. “Mom, can you go?”
She does.
Josh is staring at him, flipping pages through his textbook without looking. “I take it you don’t have many friends?” Teasing, smiling, his teeth appear as he laughs.
Tyler sinks. His chest is on fire. He smiles, powers through it. “Not really.”
They fall back into place, doing their homework, listening to whatever music Tyler decides to play next.
*
Tomorrow comes, and so does his mom. Tyler is talking to Josh again, their heads bent low as they play Pokémon. She enters at the moment Josh has managed to secure his first victory. Josh is shouting, fists high, and Tyler is shouting with him, hands over his face in surprise, in disappointment, but most of all, in excitement. “Josh! I can’t believe you—oh my—that was so sick!”
“So sick!”
Their celebration is cut short. Tyler is spinning in his chair and seeing his mom. Josh continues to roll around on his bed while this happens, while she asks Tyler if he’s going to leave his room today, if he’s going to do anything today. And this is just like her, isn’t it? Pestering Tyler, right in front of Josh, right after she meets him, hoping to scare him off. Tyler falters a moment, but he doesn’t let it affect him. He stares at her, and she stares at him back. If looks could kill, Tyler would be in prison for matricide.
She leaves.
Josh is quiet. “What was that about?”
Tyler shakes his head. “What did you hear?”
“Nothing.”
“Then it’s nothing.”
*
Tyler waits a week.
It’s Thursday night. Josh doesn’t have class on Fridays. They stay up late, pulling their laptops and their chargers onto their beds and doing nothing, just keeping in contact with each other through glances back and forth and the occasional sneeze and clear of a throat.
Josh’s laptop is beside him, his eyes trained on something off-screen—a television. Balanced on the crown of his head, Josh forgets the remote is there. He’s shocked to feel it thump onto his chest when he moves toward the sound of Tyler’s voice. “Yeah?” He rubs his palm into his sternum.
“You okay there?”
“Forgot you dared me to…”
“Yeah.”
The remote disappears under a pillow, then under the blanket, Josh twisting around to settle onto his stomach. “What did you say? Before, I mean.”
Tyler is on his stomach, too, his own TV on mute behind him. Dark, cozy, Tyler’s room is a cave. His eyes will be aching later. “It’s stupid.” His screen is split in two again, though Josh’s side is remarkably larger than the one to the right. Josh doesn’t need to know that.
“Doubt it. Tell me.”
“I’m on Wikipedia—”
“Scandalous.”
“—and I’m looking at, uh, this list of phobias.” For a second, Josh seems confused, but he grows concerned, interested, even, moving his laptop into a more suitable spot to rest his head on his arms or a pillow. “Do you want me to read some to you?” Tyler asks.
“Yes,” Josh says, and neither of them mentions Josh could pull up the webpage on his computer and read along.
Tyler clears his throat rather professionally. Josh rolls his eyes. “Well, there’s this, um, coulrophobia.” Josh frowns. “Guess what that is.”
“Something to do with, like, cauliflowers.”
“No,” Tyler laughs, shaking his head. “That’s ridiculous, Josh, get your head in the game.”
“Shut up, Ty.”
Tyler grins. “It’s actually the fear of clowns.” Josh makes a noise at this—a sound of something obvious and sarcastic. “But,” Tyler adds, “it says it’s not restricted to evil clowns.”
Josh slowly nods. “Makes sense.”
“Yeah, everybody’s a little scared of clowns.” Tyler scratches his nose. He scrolls through the list, glancing at Josh from the corner of his eye. “Dementophobia is the fear of becoming insane.”
“Like Dementors. From Harry Potter.”
“Sure.” Tyler taps his finger into his arrow keys, trying to seem more preoccupied with the list on the page than the list in his head. His throat constricts. He clears it again. Josh doesn’t roll his eyes this time. “Necrophobia is the fear of death or of the dead. Taphiphobia is the fear of the grave or the fear of being placed in a grave while still alive.”
Josh shivers, tugging on the edges of his blanket and pulling it around him. “That’s just—”
“Yeah.”
“Like, they thought you were dead, and they buried you, and was it… like, was it them just burying you to get rid of you?” Josh stares at his hands, fingers splayed out like branches of a spider web. “Was it malicious?”
Tyler turns away, touching a can of Red Bull he has on the floor. He grabs the end of his comforter instead, rubbing his eyes before resurfacing, popping back onto the screen. He acts like he’s fine, but he’s tearing apart inside. “I, I can stop if you want me to.”
Josh shakes his head. “Nah, I’m fine. Keep going.”
Tyler isn’t fine. He goes through the list again, finding the words that stood out to him before, the ones he wanted to run by Josh. “Agyrophobia is the fear of crossing the street.”
“That must be hell.”
“Algophobia is the fear of pain. Haphephobia is the fear of touching or of being touched.” Josh frowns at that, his fingers curling and tugging his blanket again. Threatening to turn into a cocoon, Josh sets his head on a pillow, shutting his eyes. Tyler wants to stop, but he doesn’t stop. “Phobophobia is the fear of fear. Autophobia is the fear of isolation. Monophobia is the fear of being alone or of one’s self. Anthropophobia is the fear of people.” Tyler’s voice is shaky, trembling at the edge. He swallows and swallows again. “And, uh, agoraphobia is the fear of open spaces.”
Not once does Josh laugh. Not once does Josh make fun of any phobia. It might be due to Tyler racing through the list and leaving no time for a reaction, or it might be because Josh doesn’t actually think any of this is funny. He’s raised his head by now, has been raised since Tyler got to “autophobia.” Eyes on him, wide with worry, Josh opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He tries again, and still nothing comes out. Again, and, “Tyler, I—”
“I think I hear my mom,” Tyler says, and logs out of Skype. It’s late. His mom shouldn’t be up, but she is. She’s knocking on his door now, talking to Tyler through the wood. Tyler closes his eyes and hopes Josh didn’t think he was lying. “What is it?” he calls, shutting his laptop and sliding it under a pillow.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Josh. Don’t worry, I just told him bye.”
His mom may have been standing there for the last few minutes, maybe even for an hour. The conversations with Josh aren’t of any interest. They don’t share secrets. They sit and stare at each other. They appreciate each other’s company, and that’s all. So why does Tyler feel like he’s being born again every time he sees Josh’s face?
Tyler curls into a ball.
His mom knocks on the door again. “Can I come in?” She enters without a reply, sitting on Tyler’s bed, mindful of the cans of Red Bull resting on the floor. “Honey, you need to get out of here,” she says, the back of her hand pressing to his forehead. “You can’t live like this. What are you doing?”
Tyler looks ahead. He sees nothing. He hears nothing. He hears everything.
“I thought this was some silly phase, but it’s been years, Tyler. Your dad and I are getting worried. And Josh… does he know? Is he like this, too? Oh, Tyler, you shouldn’t be… spreading this. This isn’t good. This isn’t normal. You can’t… You need to live. This isn’t living. This is… You might as well be dead. What are you doing?”
Tyler can’t breathe.
“You go to school, I know, but you aren’t really going to school if you sit in your room all day and do it online. All you do is lie in bed and play your games. Don’t you want to do something with your life? You’re twenty years old, Tyler. You can’t be acting like this still. What will your sister think? She looks up to you. Tyler, are you listening to me? You need to stop this. We’re going out tomorrow—all of us, as a family. And that includes you. We’re going to have a good day tomorrow, whether you like it or not. Do you understand me? I’m tired of this. You need to grow up. You’re an adult, Tyler.”
Tyler can’t move.
“Your dad and I have been discussing this, and we’ve decided that if you don’t… stop doing whatever you think you’re doing, we’ll be forced to evict you. We don’t want to do that. We want what’s best for you, Tyler, and this isn’t it. We think tomorrow will be good for you. Because we’re going out tomorrow, and we’re spending the whole day together. I hope you’re listening to me, young man. Tyler. Tyler.”
Tyler can’t talk.
His mom closes the door with a quiet hand.
*
Tyler doesn’t think he sleeps. He stays on his bed, listening to his phone vibrate a few feet above his head. It must be Josh. It can only be Josh.
When light filters through the room, his mom does also. She’s fluttering about his room, throwing back the curtains, turning off his television, trying to get him ready without him actually getting ready. It’s when she’s going through his closet she realizes Tyler has not moved or even acknowledged her arrival.
“Tyler,” she says, like sour nectar. “Tyler, I told you we’re doing something today. Please get up.” She moves over to him at the sight of him pointedly not getting up. Her hand goes to his forehead again, and she waves her hand in front of his face. “Tyler, honey, this isn’t funny. I told you we had plans, and you can’t just act like this because you don’t want to go. That’s childish, Tyler. You’re acting like a child.”
His dad pokes his head into the room, frowning at his mom crouching by his bed and her stern expression. “He isn’t moving,” she says. “He’s doing this on purpose.”
One by one, his room begins flooding with the members of his family—the first time in a long time his room has become host to someone besides himself and his occasional mother. “What’s going on?” one of his brothers asks, and it’s his sister who shrieks, “Don’t move him!” Her phone is in her hand, knowledge at her fingertips. “Don’t move him, don’t move him.”
“I can’t move him!” his mom exclaims. “He won’t move!”
His dad attempts at moving him, much to his nearby sister’s dismay. Tyler’s body is a stone, rigid, unforgiving, and his parents are using the wrong tools to sculpt him. Hands pass by his face, fingers snapping, and he is still. He can’t move. Tyler can’t move.
“Call an ambulance,” he hears.
“No, don’t move him,” he hears.
“We can check on him every hour,” he hears.
“What is that going off?” he hears.
“Tyler’s phone,” he hears.
“Josh,” he hears.
“Who’s Josh?” he hears.
“Nobody,” he hears.
*
Mother by his bed, sister at his desk, father outside the room, and brothers nowhere to be found, Tyler comes to with exhausted muscles and his hand immediately shooting toward his phone. He comes to with a bang, with his sister squealing and his mom calling with a voice that could raise the dead. Tyler pulls his phone from its charger, the screen lighting up with unread texts and missed calls from Josh.
“Tyler,” his mom says. “Tyler, are you okay?”
Tyler comes to at seven o’clock that evening. He’s wet the bed, his body protesting in more ways than he can count. His head hurts. He fights to walk past his mom, his dad, but his dad pushes him back into the room, his mom demanding to know what’s gotten into him. And yet, Tyler still soldiers through, ducking under his dad’s arm and going to the bathroom across the hall, closing and locking the door behind him, his phone with him, Josh with him. His mom pounds on the door, Tyler switches on the shower, and the pounding stops.
“What are you doing?” he whispers to himself.
There is silence from the other side of the door. From his room, his sister explains catatonia.
“What are you doing?” he whispers, reading Josh’s messages, the worry, the pleading to text him back, please text him back when he can. Tyler calls Josh, the phone shaking in his hand as he steps from his clothes.
“Tyler!” Josh’s voice is full of relief and smiles. “I was worried about you. I didn’t like how we ended last night.”
“My mom walked into my room.” Tyler sticks his hand under the shower head. He twists the dial.
“Oh, right. You said that, didn’t you?” Josh sighs. Tyler imagines him running his fingers through his blue hair. “I was just worried about you, man. Haven’t talked to you all day, practically.”
Tyler stops turning the dial when it is unable to turn anymore. “I couldn’t move.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t move. I wanted to move, and I couldn’t.”
Josh is quiet.
Tyler says, “I’ll text you later,” and hangs up. His phone clatters to the floor. He steps into the shower, the hot water hitting the tub floor and coming up as steam. He’s trapped in a sauna, in a steam engine, and he stands under the steady stream of blisters and branding.
*
The sheets on his bed are new. His laptop is on his desk. Where trash used to litter the floor, only vacuumed carpet remains. Tyler stands in the middle of his room, a towel wrapped around his waist. No one is here. He is alone.
He closes the door and dresses in a t-shirt and shorts. Cinnamon is in the air; his mom shoved something into the plug beneath the window. With curtains still pulled back, the sun has set early, giving the walls an orange glow. Chrysophobia is the fear of the color orange.
Tyler sits on his bed, smelling of laundry detergent and dryer sheets. He texts Josh. It’s a lot, starting with “last night” and ending with “she was right: I would be better off dead.”
Josh calls him. Tyler declines. Josh texts him. You need to stay alive
why? she’s right
Fuck her.
Tyler cries.
Where do you live? I’ll fly or drive or walk if I have to
shut up. i’m not good company
Liar
where do you live?
And Josh tells him because there’s no danger of Tyler visiting him, is there? It’s the last one on a dead end, can’t miss it
Tyler goes through his mini-fridge and finds he has been wiped clean of everything.
so you don’t care
Care about what?
that i’m a freak
You aren’t a freak, Tyler. Don’t ever say that.
Tyler lies on his bed. He shuts his eyes. “What are you doing?”
*
To expect everything to return to the way it was before would be stupid of Tyler, but that’s what he does. He wakes to his mom opening his door, pulling back the curtains, and his dad is with her this time, lifting him from the bed.
“No,” he says. “Stop, please.”
“We’re going, Tyler. Yesterday changed nothing.”
“Mama, don’t make me.”
They make him.
He’s outside on the front porch in the autumn air for a total of two minutes before he loses consciousness.
*
He wakes in his bed. He is alone. He texts Josh what happened.
Josh calls him. Tyler declines. Josh texts him. They should have taken you to the hospital, man
that would have made it worse
You don’t know that
i do know that, josh
Tyler hasn’t eaten in days. He’s weak, his head spinning, spinning, spinning thoughts into thoughts that are not. “What are you doing?”
Are you feeling okay now?
no, sick, hungry
Eat something. Maybe you’ll feel better after.
maybe
Text me after you eat.
His parents and siblings are in the kitchen, at the dining table. There are blank stares thrown his way, forks dropping, mouths dropping. He’s trembling, finding it hard to stand.
His sister is the one to set Tyler down, to fix him a plate of nothing but mashed potatoes. She loads it down with butter and feeds the first few bites to him, until he can hold the spoon without fear of it slipping.
“We were just talking about you, Tyler,” his mom says, not meeting his eye. “You need to see someone.”
“No,” he says.
She sets her jaw, her teeth gnashed together. “They can come here, and they can bend over backwards for your insane rules.”
“I’m not insane,” Tyler mumbles. His hand begins to shake. His sister takes the spoon from him. He takes it back. “I don’t want to see anyone.”
“We’re going to keep trying, Tyler. We’re going out tomorrow—”
“Mom—”
“—and if we’re unable to tomorrow, then we’ll do it the next day.”
Tyler’s siblings are leaving the table, faces pale, awkward; they don’t want to be here to witness this. He looks down at the clump of mashed potatoes, his grip tight and white-knuckled around the spoon. “I don’t want to.”
She smiles that smile that raises shivers and turns everything into molasses. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
His dad gets up from the table. Tyler shifts to the right in just enough time to vomit on the kitchen floor.
*
That night, Tyler orders a GPS and makes it ship overnight. He catches up on homework and listens to Josh mindlessly beat on some drums in the next room.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he knows he needs Josh.
*
He gets up early and waits in the living room for the mail to come. His dad sees him, but says nothing.
The mail comes at ten. The box is smaller than the one his phone charger arrived in. He’s heading back to his room when he hears, “If you think venturing outside of your room will make me change my mind, you’re wrong.”
Tyler closes the door.
*
In between their Pokémon battles, Tyler reads a driver’s manual online. He isn’t paying attention to what he’s doing in the game, and Josh notices, texting him afterward. Did you let me win that round?
you caught me
They play Mario Kart for a bit, Josh remarking on how careful Tyler is driving.
just trying to avoid those banana peels you keep dropping my way
His mom tells him to go to bed. “We have a big day tomorrow,” she says.
Tyler lies on top of the blankets, listening to the sound of his heart racing. It wouldn’t slow even if he took medicine for it. He listens to his heart, and he listens to the house. Nobody moves. Nobody is here. Tyler is alone.
A duffel bag is on his shoulder, his book bag on his back, his laptop inside, along with his Nintendo 3DS and other items he deems necessary. His phone is in his pocket, charged to about ninety percent. It’s enough. He dresses warmly, a beanie on his head, his hood pulled over that. The bedroom door opens without a noise. It shuts as silently as it opens. He goes through the house as silently as his door.
On the island, the keys sit. Tyler’s fingers twitch as he pries the key to his car off the ring. It’s marked with a piece of tape, with a black T etched on with a Sharpie. In his palm, the key means nothing to him. In his fist, it means everything to him. He continues through the house, head low, not meeting the eye of any who might see him. Nobody moves. Nobody is here. Tyler is alone.
“What are you doing?” Tyler whispers, now on the front porch, the fall breeze cool. His head is swimming, his ears ringing, but he still shuts and quietly locks the front door. The porch steps groan as he walks down them, and he sees black, he thinks he might pass out, but he doesn’t. He jams the key into the car, turning it. Shaking, he can’t stop shaking.
Once inside the car, Tyler begins to cry. He shuts his eyes, duffel bag on the floor of the passenger side, his backpack in the passenger seat. Breathing is hard; it feels like he’s suffocating.
The zippers on his backpack are a puzzle to him. Tyler struggles to open it and pull out the GPS he got just this morning. He’s shaking, a mess, a clumsy mess. He types in Josh’s address, his lips moving, speaking in tongues. “What are you doing? What are you doing?”
Tyler turns the volume all the way up, then grabs his phone, going onto YouTube and looking up soundtracks to old Nintendo games. He turns the volume up for that, too, and he still cannot hear it over the pounding of his heart. It sounds like his mom against the bathroom door. She wants in. She wants Tyler to see someone. Tyler is going to see someone.
He starts the car. The engine is so foreign to him, and so absent from his family, they think nothing of it. His mom drives it now and again, but it’s dusty. It’s dusty. Tyler sneezes after blowing off the dashboard.
Seatbelt tight, Tyler touches the steering wheel. Ten and two position, he read online, and he does that. His hands don’t shake. His adrenaline falls. He has never felt safer in his life.
And so Tyler drives to Josh.
*
It’s scary.
The world is scary.
*
Tyler goes below the speed limit, gets honked at while going down the highway, and hears yelling as a car passes him, fists raised, middle fingers raised.
He makes it to Josh’s town in one piece, and inches to the house at the dead end without fainting. The GPS tells him he’s here, and his phone continues to play music from Donkey Kong.
Inside the car, he’s stationary, protected. The car is his bodyguard, keeping him from the dangers of the outside world. For a moment, Tyler thinks he might actually be dead, might be lying somewhere on the side of the road because there’s no way he’s here. He couldn’t have made it. He couldn’t have. Tyler grows queasy thinking about going out, and he keels over when he actually goes out. This is a dream. It has to be a dream.
Tyler turns off the music. He returns the GPS into his bag.
He’s empty at Josh’s front door. He carries nothing, in fear of Josh pushing him away. Tyler is light-headed already, in need of something stable to sit on. He knocks on the door first, just to be polite. Josh texts him. It’s about him, but it isn’t about him.
Dude, someone just knocked on my front door? Do they know it’s two in the morning?
maybe they’re your secret admirer or something
Oh haha funny, man. There’s a car parked out front
crap, can you see them?
No
dang it
Do I answer it? They just knocked again
maybe they need help
Okay, if you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, assume I’m dead and call the cops for me
rest in peace joshua
True to his word, Josh opens the door. Blue hair sticking up, dressed in a big sweatshirt and black plaid pajama bottoms, Josh looks like he woke moments ago. His eyes are wide, though, confused and scared and surprised all at once. Josh’s lips move and go through a cycle of emotions. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t believe what’s right in front of him, swaying lightly, growing paler, becoming weaker. “Tyler, shit, what are you doing?”
Tyler retches and sees nothing.
*
He’s on a couch. Heavy, weighed down, Tyler opens his eyes. There’s no natural light in the room, only artificial from a television with subtitles. Tyler watches it and finds the words hard to read. It grows fuzzy. Everything is spinning, rotating, and then Josh is here, and it all settles.
Damp washcloth in tow, Josh touches Tyler’s forehead, gentle, delicate. He prods sick skin and smiles a soft smile. “Hey,” he whispers, running the cloth down Tyler’s neck, letting the stray water droplets pool in the dip of a collarbone. “Are you okay?” Josh holds up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Tyler closes his eyes. “Three.” He sleeps.
*
This time, he wakes to natural light. It’s early and pink. Josh is beside him again, on the floor, leaning against the sofa, their heads pressed together. Tyler moves, turning onto his side, and Josh moves, too, rubbing at an eye and stifling a yawn in the crook of his elbow.
“Better?” Josh pushes back Tyler’s hair. “You look better, Ty.”
It’s different hearing it in person, up close like this. Josh even looks different. He’s real, all edges and delicate facial features. In profile, he is even more beautiful, the light bouncing off his nose, his forehead. The blue of his hair is pastel, not as dark as it is on a screen.
Tyler reaches out, hand trembling, and presses his palm to Josh’s cheek. Josh is warm. Tyler is clammy, a corpse. Josh is alive. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Tyler says. Josh holds Tyler’s wrist. “I can’t go back there. Not today.”
“You don’t have to go back today,” Josh says. He strokes the curve of Tyler’s wrist. “You can stay here and rest.”
Tyler closes his eyes. He dreams of Josh.
*
He wakes again, an hour later, his phone loud in his pocket. Josh is in another room. The television’s set to a low volume, the subtitles gone. The smell of eggs comes from the kitchen.
Tyler takes out his phone, groggy, fumbling with it. He drops it to the floor before being able to answer. “Hello?”
“Tyler, where the hell are you?” his mom asks, her voice hushed and booming and frightening and caring. “You’re not in your room. You’re not even in the house. Your car’s gone. Tyler, you don’t know how to drive. Where are you? Did someone take you?”
“No.”
Josh comes into the room, still in his pajamas. He’s all smiles.
“I’m fine. I’m safe. I’m with Josh.”
“Josh? Did he pick you up? Tyler, you can tell me if he kidnapped you.”
“I went here by myself.”
“Tyler—”
Tyler hangs up. He turns off his phone. “Did you fix scrambled eggs?”
Josh nods. “I’ll get you a bowl.”
*
“Go easy,” Josh says, next to Tyler. “You don’t want to upset your stomach.”
Tyler sits on the couch, slumped into the curve of the sofa’s arm. Legs to his chest, body curled into a tight ball, Tyler glances at Josh before returning to the bowl of eggs in his hands. The fork is shaking lightly, the prongs knocking against Tyler’s teeth as he eats. Every motion is slow, calculated, and watched by Josh.
Josh is close to Tyler, an arm thrown across the back of the couch. Tyler’s toes curl into Josh’s thigh, scratching, prodding. They move together—Josh taking hold of Tyler’s ankle, and Tyler stretching his leg and shifting, both his legs over Josh’s lap. “Okay?” Josh asks, and Tyler nods.
Josh weaves his fingers through Tyler’s toes, squeezing. They’re cold. Josh had ripped off his shoes and socks after he got Tyler inside. An ugly brown bucket is on the floor, three washcloths draped over the edge, Tyler’s heavier clothes nearby. He had dressed warmly, but it made him worse in the long run. He sweat and cried, and he doesn’t remember how he got on the couch. Just in his boxer briefs and t-shirt now, Tyler is comfortable. Josh checks on him every hour, a hand on his wrist, his neck, his forehead.
“Was I talking?” Tyler asks, stabbing into his eggs. “I don’t remember if I said anything.”
“You were talking, but it was… mostly sounds.” Josh skims the pad of his thumb along Tyler’s toenails. “Like, groaning—maybe? It scared me.” Josh lets out a huff of air, like he’s trying to laugh it off, but he can’t. “I thought I should call an ambulance, and then I remembered you told me that would have made… it worse, or like… This was different. I don’t know. I got you on the couch, and you stopped making those sounds, and I stayed with you.”
Tyler raises his foot and touches Josh’s face with it. “I appreciate it.”
He keeps his foot there until Josh bursts out laughing. “Dude, stop, you’re gross.”
“You were just holding hands with it!”
Josh laughs some more, Tyler joining in. “Just eat your eggs.”
*
Josh goes to class around ten. Swiftly, he moves about the house and gets ready, tossing books into a bag, pulling a hoodie over his head, sticking a toothbrush in his mouth. Tyler keeps to the couch in his ball, picking at the blanket Josh gave him. On the cushion, to his left, Tyler’s phone is taking its time with restarting. It is in this moment Tyler is thankful his mom never took it from him. She had every opportunity to, and may have even thought about it, but ultimately she decided to let her son keep in contact with Josh and, essentially, the outside world. She says she doesn’t understand, but she must know something to know Tyler would have gotten much worse if he was stripped of his electronics.
His phone doesn’t stop vibrating.
Josh sits on the sofa, his bag dropping to the floor. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Tyler picks up his phone and goes through his messages. “My mom isn’t happy.”
“Are you?” Josh grabs Tyler’s knee, holding it.
“Yeah.” Tyler raises his head. “She wants me to come home.”
“Now that doesn’t make sense. Didn’t she want you to leave?”
“And she was about to evict me.” Tyler points, realization on his face. “Fuck her!”
They high-five, fingers lacing, fingers squeezing.
Josh smiles. “Text me if you need anything, yeah? I’ll rush back.”
“Wi-Fi password?” Tyler quirks an eyebrow.
Josh rolls his eyes. “I’ll get it. Don’t worry.”
“Can you get my stuff out of my car, too?” Tyler smiles. “Please?”
Josh leans in, stroking Tyler’s eyebrow, down to his cheek. “I’ll get it,” he repeats. “Don’t worry.”
*
Tyler calls his mom when Josh leaves. Before she can speak, he says, “I don’t want to go home.”
“Tyler, you can’t push your problems onto this boy. Tell me where you are. We’ll come get you.”
“No.”
“Tyler—”
“I’m going to hang up,” he says, “and I don’t want you to call me back. If I want to talk to you, then I will talk to you.”
“Tyler, I—”
He hangs up. She doesn’t call back.
A burning laptop on his thighs, a half-full notebook on his lap, Tyler scratches his head with the end of a pen. Being up to his neck in missed coursework isn’t unfamiliar to him.
*
Josh returns singing, beating on the walls as he passes them. Tyler doesn’t know which song it is, but it doesn’t matter. He brings his gaze up, eyes catching Josh’s once he enters the room. Tyler smiles, more than just his thighs on fire. “Did you have a good day?”
“Pretty good, yeah.” Josh drops his backpack on the floor, joining it a moment later. He sets his arms on the couch, peering at Tyler’s laptop. “You don’t have a fan for that?” Josh gets up and disappears, coming back around the corner with a laptop fan in hand. “A little dirty, with, uh, smoke damage, but it’s better than no fan at all.”
Tyler takes it and plugs it into his laptop. The whirling is stuttered, and it makes him laugh. “Thanks, Josh.”
“Doing homework?”
“Yeah.”
“Need anything right now?”
Tyler shakes his head. “I’m fine.”
Josh ruffles Tyler’s hair. Tyler scrunches his nose. “Good.”
*
Tyler sleeps on the couch with the television remote in his hand. If either Josh or he notices the other’s lingering looks after saying good night, they don’t show it.
*
Every morning, Josh checks on Tyler, a palm to his neck or forehead, sometimes two fingers against the soft inside of his wrist. Most mornings, Josh deems him acceptable, but sometimes, Josh frowns and sinks to the floor by the sofa and presses his cheek to the cushion, close to Tyler; and he stays there, staring, studying until Tyler turns from him with pink cheeks and narrowed eyes. “Stop that.”
“You’re warm.”
“I had a bad dream.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Sometimes Tyler tells Josh no. Sometimes he says nothing at all. Tyler reveals his dream today.
“My mom found me, and she dragged me outside, and she… she… took me home… and we went to the backyard, and she…” Tyler shuts his eyes. “Buried me alive.”
Josh scoots closer, his head on Tyler’s chest. “What was worse? Being buried alive or going outside?”
Tyler touches Josh’s hair. “Being found by my mother.”
*
Tyler stays on the couch. He uses Josh’s bathroom when it becomes necessary, but the rest of the house is unknown to him. Despite Josh welcoming him with open arms, Tyler still thinks of himself as a guest and this house a temporary residence. Josh will grow tired of him, and Tyler will be forced to go outside again.
“Josh,” Tyler says one evening, “do you like me?”
The scene is the same as any other day: Tyler doing homework, Josh on the couch beside him doing the very same. They do this so often it becomes a routine. Even if Josh has no work to do for his classes, he’s by Tyler anyway, whether it be scrolling through his phone or watching the television. Tyler hasn’t even seen this TV turned off since his arrival.
Josh is watching TV this evening, humming his acknowledgment of Tyler’s question without meeting his eyes. “Yeah, you’re cool.”
Tyler blinks. He lowers his head, clicking his pen four times. “Josh,” he whispers, “do you like me?”
Josh turns his head now. Whether it’s because of Tyler repeating his question or the show cutting to commercial can’t be certain. He stares at Tyler, brow furrowing briefly, but then he parts his lips, and he understands. Tyler has never seen a person look softer. “Yeah,” Josh says, nodding. “You’re cool.” There’s more this time; this time Josh leans over, kissing Tyler’s cheek. It’s a peck, nothing special. Tyler thinks he might start crying. He keeps his head low, trying to piece together a coherent answer to no avail. Josh is watching TV, his arm around the back of the couch now.
Tyler clicks his pen four more times. “Josh, can you kiss me again?”
“Yeah,” Josh says, straightening up, clearing his throat. “On your lips, right?”
Tyler nods. “Yes, on my lips.”
Cupping the side of Tyler’s neck, Josh kisses Tyler. It would be cliché to say the world stops spinning, but the word stops spinning. Josh is so… careful. They don’t go further than gentle suction, only progressing when Tyler is ready. It’s careful even here, too, leaning more so toward desperation rather than just enjoying each other’s company. Tyler feels tongue, uses his tongue. He touches Josh’s chest. He touches Josh’s neck. He touches Josh’s face.
“Move this,” Josh says, and Tyler doesn’t need to be asked twice.
His laptop goes on the floor, with care, of course, and Tyler drops his notebook on top of the closed lid. This isn’t with care. Josh touches him, his fingers curling around his side, and Tyler groans, and they’re kissing again. The couch dips, Josh crowding Tyler onto a cushion.
“Here?” he asks. “Do you want me to kiss you here?” Josh’s lips make their home at Tyler’s neck, peppering kisses there.
Tyler nods. “Yes. There.”
“Where else? Tell me where else.”
Tyler is all heat. The blanket is twisted, falling off the couch. His hands fumble for purchase, his fingers caught in the wool, Josh’s eyes, playful and dark, scanning his face. “I-I, Josh, I don’t know.”
Josh laughs. “You must have some idea where you want my mouth.” He buries his face in the crook of Tyler’s neck again, his arm wrapping around Tyler’s waist to pull him in closer. Tyler’s legs fall open, Josh between them.
Tyler closes his eyes. “I’ve never done this before.”
“I figured.” Josh pulls back, looking at Tyler. “I thought that’d make you… more eager?” He frowns. “More nervous?”
Tyler nods.
Josh kisses the corner of his mouth. “Don’t have to do this. Not until you’re ready. Don’t have to do anything until you’re ready.”
There it is. The tears that have been building up are now spilling over. Tyler wipes them away as quickly as they come. “Thank you.” Josh begins moving away, going backwards on all fours, but Tyler pulls Josh in, grabbing his shoulders. “On my mouth,” he mumbles, and Josh kisses his mouth, open, needy.
“On my neck,” he sighs, and Josh kisses his neck, his teeth digging in the lightest amount. Tyler arches into Josh, Josh’s hands holding him up once more. In Josh’s lap, Tyler’s bottom rests. “Want to do something.” Tyler touches Josh’s face, brushing away a strand of blue.
Josh smiles. He kisses Tyler’s mouth, sucking on a lip. “Surely, you’ve done this.” Laying Tyler down, Josh’s hand falls between Tyler’s legs, grabbing, groping. Tyler gasps. Josh licks it out of him. “Have you done this?”
“Yes,” Tyler says.
“Show me.”
Tyler pushes himself up, scooting, propping himself on some pillows. Josh follows him, close, kissing Tyler’s cheek before he’s sitting, his legs beneath him. He watches Tyler, fixing his legs, criss-cross applesauce, ready for a show. “Show me,” Josh says. “Show me, Tyler.”
His movements are erratic, too out of touch, too into the touch. Tyler works off his boxer briefs, his skin flushed, too hot, too hot. Tyler looks at everything but Josh, and Josh looks at nothing but Tyler. Soon, they’re both staring at Tyler’s cock, already hard, already leaking.
“What do you think about?” Josh asks.
Tyler wraps his fingers around the base, lips parting. “I think about you.”
“What am I doing?”
“Watching me.” Tyler slides his hand up, runs it back down, pre-come slick. “You’re watching me. On your computer.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Josh says. “Late at night. I’ve wanted to ask if we could… but I never did.”
Tyler smiles. “Should have asked. I would have said yes.”
Josh thinks, his face growing pinched. His eyes narrow, his lips purse. “Would that make you more comfortable?” he asks, meeting Tyler’s gaze. “If I left the room, got on my computer, and watched you from there?”
A flutter passes through Tyler’s stomach, his heart dropping to rest with the acid. “Yes,” he says, “but I don’t want you to leave.” He thumbs the head of his cock, his heart crawling its way back to the cavity of his chest. “I have the real thing.”
Josh kisses him, a prying kiss that opens Tyler’s mouth and legs. His foot slips from the couch, has to rest on the floor on tiptoe as he kisses Josh, slow, hard. He begins sliding his fist along his cock, Josh groaning, Tyler gasping. “You’re so hot.” Josh hides in Tyler’s neck, his forehead sliding down to rest on Tyler’s shoulder. “Tyler.”
“Josh.” Tyler leans his head against Josh’s, prodding him with the bridge of his nose. “Can you spit on my hand?” He turns his hand, palm up, and holds it up to Josh. “Please.”
It comes out slowly, like a giant raindrop. Tyler’s skin turns to gooseflesh. He stares at it, feels it drip between his fingers, and does nothing more. Josh takes over, his hand cool as it covers Tyler’s, guiding them both to his cock. “There you go,” he says, inching up their fists, dragging them down. Tyler is limp, watching with heavy-lidded eyes and wet lips. “So good.” Josh removes his hand. Tyler continues, languid, twisting his wrist. “Very good, Tyler.” Josh sits again, a leg on the couch, the other with a foot on top of Tyler’s. Tyler curls his toes, and Josh does it back.
“What else am I doing?” Josh asks. “Am I touching myself, too?”
Tyler shakes his head. “Just watching.”
“Do you like being watched?”
Tyler closes his eyes. He speeds up his hand.
Josh grins. “Do you like being told what to do?”
“You do.”
“How do you know that?”
“You just told me.” Tyler opens his eyes, hand stilling. “Kiss me.”
“On your mouth?”
Tyler nods. Josh kisses him.
Josh says, “Where else?”
Tyler shakes his head. “Touch me.”
Josh doesn’t need clarification. He wraps his fingers around Tyler’s cock, the other firm on Tyler’s hip. Before he gets into it, he lowers his head and spits again, and Tyler whines at the bead of saliva rolling down the side. “Ah,” he says, and Josh says, “Ah?” And Tyler nods, and Josh kisses his mouth and moves his hand and squeezes his hand and twists his hand and moves the world with his hand. “Crap,” Tyler hisses, hips thrusting up into Josh’s fist. “Shit.” Tyler clutches Josh’s shoulders, trembling. “Fuck.”
Hand damp with Tyler’s semen, Josh licks it all up. Chest rising and falling, manic, too aware, too tired, a contradictory, Tyler watches Josh. “I don’t care,” Tyler says, poking the bottom of Josh’s foot with his big toe. “I want you to fuck my mouth.”
Josh ditches his clothing, though keeps on his shirt, only because Tyler had done the same. They find a pillow, tucking it behind Tyler’s head as Josh goes on to straddle Tyler’s chest. Pink, curved, it’s hard to tell when exactly Josh had become aroused, but Tyler isn’t complaining. He’s more confident with this, and he isn’t sure how or why. Tyler is still swimming from his orgasm, from watching Josh clean off his own hand, and now he wants that. Tyler is quite literally gagging for it. Josh eases into it at first, then does what Tyler had wanted; Josh fucks his mouth, pausing when Tyler actually starts to gag and cough and cry around him.
“Sorry,” Tyler says, wiping the drool from his chin. “It’s… overwhelming.” They find another pillow. It’s better this time. Tyler has more control. He bobs his head, and Josh pulls his hair and curses his name, and Tyler swallows.
Exhausted, happy, Tyler sleeps in Josh’s bed.
*
Refreshed, happy, Tyler wakes in Josh’s bed.
Dry, warm, Josh’s chest is to Tyler’s back, his hand splayed across Tyler’s chest, leaving pale stripes behind, brought up by nails. They had wrestled for a bit, twisting and turning on Josh’s mattress. Playful, Josh fought to be the big spoon, while Tyler fought back just to fight back. They hadn’t moved all night after that, dead as logs. They only shifted to remove their shirts, but even then, they melted back into place and didn’t feel the need to move any longer. Tyler had thought about it, especially when Josh began to kiss along the back of his neck and shoulders, though ultimately Tyler decided to keep still. If Josh was turned off by the texture of acne beneath his lips, then he would have stopped as soon as he felt it.
Josh didn’t care. He kissed Tyler’s flawed skin and turned to tongue at the pimples on his chest, down his sternum, each pectoral. Tyler felt loved, and it carries on to the morning, as Josh scratches his chest, his nose to his neck. “Did you sleep well?” Josh asks, his voice groggy. “I slept well.”
“Dreamed about you,” Tyler says, “so I slept well.”
“Shut up.” Josh runs his fingers through Tyler’s hair, ruffling the bedhead. “Don’t need to know that. I might throw up. Too sweet.”
Tyler rolls, pinning Josh, and kisses his chin. “Well, you know me.” Head lowering to Josh’s chest, Josh’s hand returns to his hair, just holding the back of Tyler’s head. They stay like that for twenty minutes. Tyler watches the clock on the bedside table tick by.
“When I get home,” Josh starts, “do you think you’d want to go out and do something?”
“No,” Tyler says.
Josh nods. “Okay.”
Two more minutes disappear. Josh says, “Feel free not to answer, but have your parents ever… tried to get someone to talk to you?”
“No,” Tyler says.
“Do you want to see someone?”
“No,” Tyler says. Then, “I know there’s something wrong with me, but I don’t want to find out what.”
Josh’s fingers go down Tyler’s back, stroking his spine. “You know what’s wrong. You told me.”
Tyler raises his head. Josh stares at him. Tyler blinks. “Do you have class today?”
Josh nods. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
They kiss.
*
Trying to fix the strings hanging from his hood, Josh tells Tyler to follow him into the spare bedroom. It’s not really a bedroom, as there’s no bed—just a recliner and a set of drums in the corner. They stand in the middle of the room, Josh pulling the hoodie strings and Tyler watching him. It takes a minute for him to get the lines the same length. He looks at Tyler. “Do you play any instruments?”
Tyler strays to the drums, an intimidating presence. “No.”
Josh opens the closet door, kicking aside some boxes falling to tug out a box that hasn’t fallen, yet is on its way. Tyler worries for Josh’s safety, but he makes it out of the closet alive.
The box drops in front of Tyler, Josh standing in front of it with his hands triumphantly on his hips. “You could try this?”
It’s a keyboard, still in its wrappings, not even attempted to be opened. Tyler sinks to the floor. Josh’s foot enters the equation, sliding the box from Tyler. “Only if you’ve finished your homework first.” He gives Tyler a look, and Tyler gives it right back before sighing loudly. Josh smiles.
So, when Josh leaves for class, Tyler does his homework. He isn’t as behind as he had been days prior, but it’s still a lot to do—readings, forum posts, a worksheet. He should be thankful he doesn’t have a paper due.
The work isn’t hard, just time-consuming. Tyler manages to finish before Josh comes home, which had been his goal from the start. He’s figured out how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” when Josh walks into the room, his backpack on a shoulder, a smile on his face. “Hey,” he says, “you’re perfect,” and Tyler steals Josh’s smile.
*
This goes on for two weeks.
They wake in Josh’s bed, they kiss, Josh goes to class, Tyler does his coursework, Tyler plays around on the keyboard, Josh comes home, Josh asks Tyler if he wants to go out, and Tyler says no, and Josh says that’s okay, and they watch TV and eat dinner and kiss some more and go to sleep in Josh’s bed.
Tyler hasn’t heard from any member of his family in two weeks. He supposes he should have expected it, that he brought this onto himself when he told his mom he didn’t want to speak to her. But because he didn’t want to speak to his mom doesn’t mean he didn’t want to speak to anybody else. Josh knows he’s affected by this, but he doesn’t know how to bring it up. Josh isn’t in touch with his family as much as Tyler would think he’d be, so Josh understands the absence.
“Do you miss them?” Josh asks, as he gets the bed ready for them. Tyler is standing in the doorway, his toothbrush in his mouth.
Tyler shrugs.
Josh stares at him. “Yeah?”
Tyler shrugs again. He goes into the bathroom, spitting out toothpaste and wiping his mouth. “I want to have sex with you,” he says, in the bedroom, staring at Josh. Josh is standing, expression blank. “Is that okay?” Tyler picks at his nails. “I thought… Did it lose its appeal with me putting it that way?”
“No.”
“You want to have sex with me, then?”
“Are you ready?”
“Josh, I’ve had your cock in my mouth about fifteen times now. It’s about time it’s put somewhere else.”
Tyler has thought about this moment late at night, in bed, in the dark. He’s thought about doing it with women and men and nameless faces with different bodies, but nothing really stuck until he met Josh. His quiet orgasms underneath his blankets finally had a purpose, and he only felt a little guilty while he jacked off during a Pokémon battle.
This, though—the real thing—is incomparable when presented with his fantasies. Josh handles him like he’s a doll, fragile, made of porcelain. To anybody else, it might have been offensive, but Tyler needs this. He needs the hands on his face, on his back. He needs Josh’s lips on his mouth, his chest, his teeth never making an appearance. Most of all, Tyler needs the gentle thrusting of Josh’s cock, his hips rocking, rolling, his moans as delicate as starlight.
“Like this?” Josh whispers, cupping the side of Tyler’s neck. “Right there?”
“Right there.” Tyler squirms, his head tilting back. “Yes, right there.”
Josh presses their foreheads together, humming. “Where?”
“My mouth.”
Josh kisses his mouth. “Baby boy.”
Tyler comes without a hand to his cock. Josh hugs him, panting, his own orgasm slow and nurturing, filling Tyler, spilling out of Tyler.
“Your mouth?”
Tyler nods.
Josh kisses Tyler again.
*
The next day, when Josh asks if Tyler wants to go out, Tyler says yes.
Josh reacts as if Tyler has rejected the idea, but realizes the mistake quickly. “Really?”
Tyler is poking at the keyboard, trying to learn the Super Mario theme. “Feel like I owe you or something. Last night was… good.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I want you to go out when you want to go out, not when you feel obligated to.”
Tyler sniffs. “Okay.” He presses down a key and keeps it pressed for a solid minute. “So, where are we going?”
Josh smiles. “It’s a surprise.”
*
It’s an animal shelter.
Stepping outside is incredibly hard and taxing on Tyler’s body. He grows weak almost immediately, his knees buckling, but Josh is there, arms around him to hold him up. “We don’t have to do this, Ty.”
“I want to,” Tyler says. If he says it enough, he’ll start to believe it. Josh already believes him.
They take it easy and slow. It’s better in Josh’s car, where Tyler is on stable ground, able to sit as still as he wants with no one to tell him to move, to get up, we’re going out, stop acting childish, you’re an adult, what are you doing, what are you doing.
At a red light, Josh touches Tyler’s arm. “Still with me?”
Tyler looks at Josh. He nods, stunted, not confident in the slightest.
“Good.” Josh turns back to the road. “I love you, Tyler.”
“Don’t say that.”
Josh frowns. He stops. He understands. “Tell me when.”
“I will.”
The animal shelter is small and friendly. It’s run by a family with brown skin and welcoming smiles. They know Josh. They greet Josh with hugs, and those hugs extend to Tyler. Tyler stands frozen, about to vomit on shoes, but Josh cuts in and says Tyler is “really shy.” They get it. They say they get it.
Tyler keeps behind Josh, holding his hand and staring at the floor.
“Thinking about staying for an hour or two,” he hears Josh say. “My boyfriend loves animals, and he’s been feeling under the weather lately.”
A girl leads them to the back. She has blue hair, like Josh. Almost faded to the same tone, Tyler wonders if they dyed their hair together.
The walk is short, but it drags on forever. Tyler has the courage to let go of Josh’s hand and stick his fingers in cages, wiggling them in the faces of cheerful puppies with missing fur and watery eyes. Josh ends up pulling him back onto track within seconds of noticing his departure.
“We can’t play with them,” Josh says. “They need to see a vet. We can play with the ones back here.”
Back here is a room with pink carpet floors and calming blue walls. Back here is where Tyler is able to fall to the floor and not feel pressured to stand again. The girl says they only have three animals available for them, but Josh shakes his head and tells her it’s fine. He sits next to Tyler.
The three animals enter at once, comfortable with the company of others. The only cat naturally approaches Josh, despite the black fur tinged with gray, sleepy eyes, and round belly. It stays near Josh, watching the two dogs. The two dogs are Yorkies, yapping as they surround Tyler and butt against his legs. Tyler scratches behind ears and kisses tops of heads, but like Josh, Tyler gravitates toward the cat. While the dogs are rolling on the floor, the cat pads to Tyler and sits beside him. It does nothing else, just sits, and Tyler doesn’t know why that single action alone makes his heart break.
The dogs are energetic, though they tire easily. By the end of the hour, they’re sleeping, and still the cat sits. Josh is rubbing a dog’s belly, its paws twitching in slumber. “Are you okay?” he asks, and looks at Tyler. “You would have told me if you weren’t okay, right?”
Tyler nods. “I’m okay.” He smiles and digs his fingers in between the cat’s shoulder blades. It begins to purr. “Are these up for adoption?”
“Yeah.” Josh pauses. “Do you want one?”
“The cat.”
Josh stares at the cat, listens to it purr. “Gotta be about eleven years old.”
“Don’t care.”
With no begging needed, Josh agrees to get the cat. Cats can be good therapy pets, and Josh says it’ll be soothing for Tyler to have someone else in the house when he’s in class. Tyler holds the cat like a baby, and the cat never stops purring, and Tyler never stops smiling.
Josh is a cat person, so Tyler lets him name it.
“Are you telling me it doesn’t already have a name? I get to have this privilege?” He taps his chin. “Well, it’s a boy, and it’s a black cat. The obvious choice has to be Daisy.”
So, Tyler, Josh, and Daisy go home together. Daisy doesn’t like the cat carrier, but he loves sitting on Tyler’s lap and looking out the car window. Josh drives, and Tyler makes sure Daisy doesn’t fly out the window. He forgets that he’s outside. He isn’t fighting to catch his breath, isn’t trying his hardest to figure out if he’ll be able to flee the scene. No, he’s in Josh’s car with a cat on his thighs, and not once does Tyler question what he’s doing.
*
On the weekends, they spend the days walking around Josh’s neighborhood. It’s getting colder. They hold hands, and if it gets too much, Tyler squeezes Josh’s hand, and they race home. They don’t have to do that a lot.
“This is beautiful,” Tyler says, admiring the orange sky and bare tree branches. “This is… something else.”
“Home.”
Tyler inhales, exhales. “Peaceful.”
On those very same weekends, they spend the evenings and nights either held up in the living room, controllers in their laps and eyes glued to the television; in the spare room, jamming until their heads threaten to burst; or in bed, all friction and not enough friction and kissing and licking and singing and “tell me where” and “right there, right there, don’t stop, you’re right there.”
*
Tyler wants to go out more. He’s the one to suggest it now, who has to push Josh into jackets and hats and the occasional scarf and tell him, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
They’re at the mall today, currently sat in the food court, sharing a large pretzel with far too little salt. They eat in silence, kicking each other under the table and acting like they didn’t.
It’s late afternoon on a Saturday, the patrons mostly made of families with small children, and then the odd couple in their midst. They’re next to two women with their toddler in a high chair, pizza sauce on his face. He keeps staring at Tyler. Tyler always waves. The boy giggles.
Josh kicks Tyler’s foot. Tyler ignores him, tearing a piece from the pretzel and shoving it into his mouth. He regrets it, begins to choke, but he has it under control.
Josh gives him his Coke. “What is it?”
“My family’s over there,” Tyler whispers, like it’s a secret.
Josh leans in, sharing the secret. “Did they see you?”
“No. I mean, I think my sister did. She kept looking over here.”
“Do you want to—?”
“No.”
“Should we leave? Do you want to leave?”
“I don’t think they know I’m here.” Tyler keeps his head low, taking apart the pretzel again. “They wouldn’t even dream of meeting me out in public. They probably think that, uh, that you locked me away somewhere.”
“That’s fucked up. Why would I do that?”
“No idea.” Tyler looks at Josh and kicks him in the shin. This time, it’s hard; it’s meant to hurt. “Stop staring at them,” Tyler hisses. “Please.”
Josh rubs his shin, frowning.
Tyler’s phone buzzes. It burns his thigh. Josh notices the change in his posture. He watches Tyler pull out his phone, watches him cover his mouth and close his eyes and breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
Hey Tyler, his sister says. Are you at the mall?
Josh’s foot is soft, lightly tapping against Tyler’s own. “Are you going to text her back?”
Tyler does. yeah
Thought so. Is that Josh?
yeah
Mom keeps talking about him. She wants us to find out who he is. She’s so sure he’s dangerous and kidnapped you
i left on my own
I’m proud of you Tyler
Tyler chews on his thumb. does mom know i’m here?
No. Just me I think. Don’t worry, I won’t go over there. I know you don’t want to talk to her
yeah
You look good Tyler, healthy, happy
i am happy
In slow motion almost, his family gets up to leave. He shouldn’t be watching, but he is. His brothers are mindlessly talking, his dad egging it on, and his mom looks pleased, like she’s free. Tyler hates her.
And then, there’s his sister, looking over her shoulder and smiling at him. She waves, and Tyler waves, too.
Josh moves to hold his hand, and he does for a moment, but he’s retracting it and claiming the rest of the pretzel for himself. He says nothing because he doesn’t know what to say. He lets Tyler sit there, a faint grin on his face, a glaze over his eyes. Tyler is somewhere Josh can never go. He is back in his bedroom, hidden in blankets, his mom yelling at him, his stomach empty, his sister feeding him mashed potatoes.
Tyler turns to Josh. “I can’t go back to that house. I wouldn’t be able to leave if I did.”
Josh understands. He kicks Tyler’s ankle. “You don’t have to go back.”
*
On the ride home, Tyler says, “Now.”
Josh says, “I love you, Tyler.”
And Tyler says, “I love you, too, Josh.”
