Chapter Text
“You know, you don’t have to go back home if you don’t wanna.”
“I’ll be fine, Josh,” Tyler murmurs, resting his head comfortably on Josh’s shoulder, picking at the stray threads of his sweater. “It’s just for a week. If I can get through eighteen years of her, I can survive another week.”
Josh sighs. Tyler can feel his warm breath ghost over his face. “Alright, angel. But call me if you ever feel like you need to, okay?”
Tyler tucks his nose into Josh’s neck and breathes in. He smells like aftershave and something else unique to him, something warm and dry and safe. “I will,” he says. “Just promise me you’ll pick up.”
It’s not the first time he’s been home since he started college--he went home for Christmas break. He spends the entire bus ride (about two hours, with three transfers) home dreading it, but when his mom opens the door to him--he always forgets he’s taller than her, now, when he stands up straight, has been for a while--he’s not nearly as anxious as he thought he’d be.
“Hey, Mom,” he says, and leans in for a side hug, hefting a bag of his stuff up on his other shoulder. His mom smiles, returns the gesture.
“Hey, baby, I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” he lies through his teeth, and tries not to be too stiff when he pulls away.
Things are okay for a few days--he catches up with his parents and Zack and Jay and Maddie, watches movies with them, plays basketball with the boys and braids Maddie’s hair every morning--it’s nice. He had almost forgotten he missed them, too.
But every moment he spends with his parents, making small talk with his dad and enduring Downton Abbey with his mom, he begins to worry that he isn’t selling his fake smiles well enough, and is already preparing to explain himself for when one of them accuses him of striking an attitude with them.
They never do.
The peace doesn’t last for long.
He’s sleeping in on the fourth day home, when his mom barges in, and immediately goes on the offensive.
“Tyler, baby, when are yo--Jesus Christ, Tyler, it’s a mess in here, it’s only been a few days! Fucking clean up this mess, okay? Are these clothes clean or dirty?”
He’d shot into a sitting position with wide eyes when he heard his door slam open, but he’s still half-asleep, brain struggling to catch up with all the sudden activity. “I--I don’t--what--I don’t know,” he finishes lamely, barely remembering what she had even asked him, heart hammering in his chest and head still reeling from sleep.
“Well then put them in your goddamn hamper! Jesus, Tyler, I really hope this isn’t how you keep up your dorm, your roommates must think you’re filthy. Clean this up,” she demands, and walks away.
It’s only when she’s safely downstairs does he realize he’s started hyperventilating, chest aching with every struggled inhale, never feeling like he’s getting enough air, and shit what the fuck, why was his vision blurry?
“Shit,” he swears quietly, wiping hurriedly at his eyes and trying to even his breathing. Jesus, this was so fucking stupid, why does he have to cry over everything . “Stupid,” he mutters to himself, pressing his hands to his face. They’re shaking.
Over breakfast, he can hardly meet her eyes, even when she babbles about suburban mom nonsense like she does every morning. He knows she’s already forgotten about it.
“I just--shit, I don’t know if I can talk about this here, I’m worried she’ll walk in and hear everything and--”
“ Do you want to text instead ?”
“No--no, I want to hear you. I need to hear you. I just need--I don’t know. I wish you were here. I need--” the word protection suddenly jumps into his head. “I need to feel safe.”
“ I’m sorry, Ty. I wish I could be there, too. ” A pause. “ Has she hurt you yet? ”
“What? No, it’s not--it’s not. I’m just--honestly, nothing’s hardly happened, she just--she yelled at me this morning for not keeping my room clean and I’m being a pissbaby about it. I mean, everybody’s mom does that, right?”
“ No, Tyler. They don’t. ”
That shocks Tyler quiet for a few moments, but he pulls himself together quickly. “Well--it doesn’t matter anyways. I’m being dumb, honestly, don’t worry about it.”
“ You’re not dumb, Ty. ”
“I know, I know, I didn’t mean that. I’m fine. It’s just--wow, you know, I really forgot exactly how much I don’t love her. Even when we’re being nice, and everything’s calm, it’s just--fake. I’m faking every minute of it. I can’t wait to get out of her, I don’t know, her presence, I guess. I can’t relax around her. I feel bad, she’s so sweet sometimes. But--I can’t explain it, it just makes me hate her more, I don’t even know why.”
“ You have plenty of reasons to hate her, Ty . You know why .”
He still dreams about killing her.
He dreams less about strangling her, now, and instead of more plausible endings--going on a hike with her, and not helping when she slips down the cliff. Giving her a light push down the stairs. It would be so easy. No one would ever know.
He could never do it, but he finds some solace in imagining it.
She’s yelling at Maddie--he doesn’t even know about what--when he doesn’t know what gets into him, but he’s suddenly going “Mom, stop it.”
She turns sharply to him, and goes, “Stay out of this, Tyler,” all bite and sting in her words. He flinches out of reflex, but he’s staring at Maddie’s trembling lips and he can’t stop himself.
“Mom, I’m serious, you’re making her cry--”
“Tyler, I said, stay the fuck out of this, okay?”
“No, Mom, please, just once, can you--”
She turns towards him again, taking one step closer, and Tyler takes one step back out of instinct. “Tyler, I fucking mean it, you better shut your mouth right now and head straight to your room and keep out of this, just because you think you’re some college hotshot now doesn’t mean you can disrespect me like this all of a sudden, okay? So shut the fuck up right now , and go to your room.”
And it’s hard--it’s so hard, because every instinct in his body is screaming danger! danger! at him in bright red letters, and he wants so badly to simply submit and apologize and back up while he still can, keep himself as safe as he’ll ever be able to, but he can’t. He knows he won’t win, and he knows this won’t end well, but he just--can’t.
So he simply shakes his head, and says, “You can’t keep doing this, Mom.”
Apparently that was the last straw for her, because she marches over, Maddie all but forgotten, grabs his arm and drags him down the hall to his room and Tyler--he’s stronger than her, knows he could pull away if he really tried, but she’s still his mother and he just can’t force himself to fight her physically so he lets her, tripping over his own feet in her hurried pace.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Tyler,” she’s saying as they march up the stairs, “But you’re acting completely out of line and like an utter brat, so you’re going to get treated like one.”
“Mom, what--”
She pushes him aggressively into his room, and he barely has his footing when there’s a hand smacking into his cheekbone hard , and he wails, stumbling.
“I don’t care how old you are, or what fancy schooling you’re getting, I’m still your mother and you will do what I fucking tell you , okay? Alright? Can you get that through you’re spoiled brat brain?” --and shit, fuck, he’s bawling now, he doesn’t even know when he started, and god damn if he isn’t sick of this happening over and over again. “And stop painting me as the enemy here, okay, you’re being a brat about all this, for God’s sake, you’ve always been a baby about shit like this, you need to learn to deal with not being right all the time!”
And--god dammit , he wants to yell, wants to scream back so badly, but all of his bravado seems to have gone into his back-sassing downstairs, and now he’s sobbing on his bedroom floor with a stinging cheek and in deeper shit with his mom than he’s been in in years and he doesn’t even know where to start picking up the pieces.
“Tyler,” she says, and it’s softer this time, so he looks up hesitantly, not even realizing he’d been covering his face with his arms protectively. “Jesus, stop with the crying, you’re eighteen, you’re better than that. Just don’t talk back to me like that again.”
He’s nodding, hurriedly, secretly relieved that that’s the worst he’s going to get for now, and then just like that, she’s gone again.
“Let’s run away.”
“ Tyler, what? What are you-- ”
“Let’s--let’s just--I mean, we can finish up this last quarter here, but, after that--let’s run away. Go across the country, to some nondescript tiny town, just, fuck, I don’t know, rent some shitty studio apartment and work minimum wage jobs and maybe starve a little but it’ll be okay, it’ll be better than now, you know? Because it’ll be just us, and--and no one--no can hurt us, no one will even know we’re there--and no one can stop us because we’re adults now, and, and--”
“ Shh, Tyler, slow down, babe. Breathe. Are you okay right now? Are you safe?”
Tyler laughs hollowly, because when has he ever. “No,” he huffs. “I fucked up so bad, she hates me so much, I haven’t done something like this since, shit, seventh grade or something, shit ,” and he’s hyperventilating again. “Please come get me, please, I’ll--I’ll meet you at the Park & Ride-- shit , she’s gonna be so pissed, aha--”
“ Tyler, please, baby, slow down, you aren’t thinking straight --”
“I don’t want to think straight,” he cuts in suddenly. “Thinking straight--that means being scared, that means letting her yell at me, that means--no, I’m not, I won’t. I want to be reckless. Fuck everything else--actually--” and he pauses.
He has a razor blade in his bathroom, and it would be a hell of a wakeup call for his mom if she found him bleeding out on the tile floors. And he imagines it, vividly, morbidly, for a second--himself unconscious on the bathroom floor with blood flooding out of his arms in ruby rivulets, razor blade in hand, his mom calling 911 over his limp body.
But somehow, in the end, he knew it wouldn’t change a thing.
“Nevermind,” he mutters, and for the second time that evening, all his bravado disappears. “I--nevermind. You’re right, I’m not thinking straight. I’m just going to go to sleep now, okay?”
“I--Tyler, are you sure you’re alright?”
He laughs hollowly again. “Of course I’m not. But neither of us can do anything about that.”
It’s quiet between them all the next day.
Tyler spends most of it cleaning his room.
As soon as Joshua’s in his sight, three days later, when Tyler’s moved back into his dorm, he runs towards him and embraces him as tightly as he can, squeezing tightly around his torso and relaxing immensely when muscular arms return the gesture. “I missed you so much ,” he almost sobs, and can’t believe how much he means it.
Josh hooks his chin over Tyler’s shoulder and sighs contentedly, rubbing up and down his back. “I missed you too, Ty, you have no idea.”
Tyler giggles when Josh picks him up and spins him in a circle, tucking himself in even closer to Josh once he sets him back down.
“Don’t let go of me,” he says into Josh’s T-shirt. Josh’s only answer is broad hands sweeping over his shoulder blades.
“I like it when you play with my hair,” Tyler sighs, his head in Josh’s lap as they both lay in Josh’s bed, the elder’s fingers stroking through his thick locks.
Josh laughs. “Yeah?”
Tyler smiles, eyes still closed. “Yeah. It reminds me--when I was real little, and my mom didn’t get angry as much--she’d let me sleep in her and papa’s bed, when I had nightmares, and she’d stroke my hair like this.” He has to take a deep breath to stop himself from getting teary. “She used to say I would help her sleep, just by being in the same bed. Her little angel.” He opens his eyes, and finds the room around him blurry. “I miss that.”
Josh’s fingers pause in his hair. “I’m so sorry, Tyler.”
A tear rolls down Tyler’s cheek, and he rushes to wipe it away. “I want that back. I want--I want a real mama, you know? I want a mama that’s real sweet, and will kiss away my booboos, and cuddle me, and tell me it’s okay when I mess up instead of yelling at me. I want a mama that will hold me when I cry, not hit me. I want a mama that will accept my apologies, really accept them, so I don’t end up feeling worse than I did before, you know? I never really had all of that, but--I still miss it.” Tears are rolling down his face more freely now, and he doesn’t bother to wipe these ones away. “She used to sing me to sleep.”
“ Tyler ,” Josh says, more urgently this time, and Tyler shuts up. “you know I can’t substitute for your mom, right?”
Tyler laughs at the absurdity of the comment. “Yeah, I know, Joshie. I don’t expect you to. I just--wanted to say it.”
“Okay,” Josh says, and then resumes combing his fingers through Tyler hair, and the younger lets his eyes fall shut. “Hey,” he says a moment later, and Tyler blinks them open again. “You know I love you, right? And that you’re perfect just the way you are, and you didn’t deserve to be treated the way you were?”
“Yeah,” Tyler says, staring at the door of Josh’s apartment. Josh was going to make him his own key, soon. He thinks about moving in here with Josh, finishing school with him, and then moving somewhere else. Across the country, maybe. Maybe to California. Maybe to Europe. Making new friends and leaving his life here far, far behind. Tyler smiles. “I know.”