Archive of Our Own ^beta

1.

Coming-of-age movies have a weird fascination with American high school parties, in Mason’s opinion. 

In real life, there are maybe fewer ragers. Or maybe Mason, a Canadian transplant to Texas, just never ran in the right circles to receive an invite. Mostly he goes to very tame, parent-monitored house parties, and then once a month or so he goes to Tyler’s house for the other side of the spectrum.

Tyler has overlong, curling hair, a miserable attempt at facial hair, and gorgeous brown eyes that outdo every girl in the school, in Mason’s unbiased opinion. He claims Canadianship despite having moved from Ontario when he was about five, declaring himself “more civilized than all you Texans”, but still owns multiple cowboy hats and a pair of genuine cowboy boots. Mason met him his first week of high school, didn’t leave his side for a couple days, almost kissed him, and then barely spoke to him for a year. 

It’s a long story.

The point is, Mason is at Tyler’s house and there’s a party going on. He has a snapback on, ripped jeans, a worn-out hoodie, and blends into probably every guy here except Tyler. 

He would know for sure if he could find Tyler behind all the alcohol (probably purchased by someone’s older sibling?), people making out (gross, go to your own house), and the loud, off-key chorus of the group of sophomores inexplicably doing a singalong in the main living room, sprawled all over each other like lazy cats.

At some point, having made his way down into the basement, Mason gives up and bums a cigarette off one of Tyler’s emo friends. “Yeah, dude,” he agrees, half-listening, and takes a long drag. He feels like shit, kind of, but he’s getting a good buzz from the shitty beer and nicotine, the pounding music that drowns out any trace of the rowdy upstairs singalong. The kid starts talking about the public school industrial complex, or something, and Mason just nods along and melts into the side of the couch. 

And obviously, because he’s finally almost sort of halfway comfortable, Tyler has to show up. 

“Hey,” he exclaims, looking as close to excited as he ever gets, “I didn’t think you’d show.”

“I wasn’t going to,” admits Mason. “I finished my English paper early and Trev probably still hasn’t finished his, so I came over.”

Tyler nods enthusiastically, looking like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “Cool, cool.”

A pause. Mason looks down and takes a long drag of the cigarette–he doesn’t buy them on his own, so he’s going to get his effort’s worth. Surreptitiously, Tyler leans down and mutters, “Come on, let’s go.”

“What,” says Mason, but he gets up agreeably enough, clutching his half-empty bottle, and barely sways when he manages to stand up and follow Tyler through the hall. He’s never going to figure out how to say no to Tyler, he thinks resignedly, and maybe right now that’s not such a bad thing–there’s only so long you can pretend to listen to someone about how, really, smoking pot in the bathroom is rebelling against the system. 

“Hi, Brownie,” says Mason when his eyes adjust to the dark of Tyler’s music room. Brownie waves at him and looks back down at his phone, probably playing one of the shooter games he insists he isn’t addicted to. 

Tyler nods impatiently and attempts to hide his wince when the music outside gets louder. “Wanna, um. There’s drinks over there,” gesturing to a cooler populated by a couple bottles and a lot of water. “We can watch a movie, if you want. I was just tuning up some stuff,” he finishes, waving expansively at the screen in front of him. 

“Isn’t this your party?”

“I got bored a couple hours in,” admits Tyler, shrugging. “Don’t really wanna talk to anyone up there. Plus, Tori showed up.” There’s the graceless mention of that situationship. Come to think of it, there’s a distinct possibility Tori had been one of the people making out in a corner that Mason had brushed by upstairs. He makes a sound of admission. 

“‘S fine,” he says, finally. “Make your music. I just wanted to get out of the house.”

He doesn’t like admitting it, but watching Tyler work on his music is magical. Like, yeah, he can play the guitar and piano halfway decently and is working his way up to the drums, but there’s something in his eyes then that you can’t really see anytime else. When Mason feels romantic enough, he thinks, sometimes, that Tyler is something special–some kind of music-shaping talent, hidden behind a curtain of greasy hair and a douchey party boy image. 

Garageband isn’t really designed to be a professional tool , but it’s just another of the universe’s rules that Tyler Seguin bends inexplicably to his will. 

So Mason sits back and nurses his beer, tries to find a place to put out his cigarette that isn’t a fire hazard. The summer’s coming up in a couple of weeks, and he’s gotta find a job to fill the time before senior year, and he should be studying for exams. Instead, he sits and enjoys the relative silence, inordinately enjoying watching Tyler tap at the screen. 

“Hey,” says Tyler suddenly, “You wanna hear this?” and fuck yeah he does. 

Mason doesn’t really let himself think about or talk to Tyler much, because, hey, that way lies madness, and he’s at least emotionally mature enough to realize that.

The first time Mason hears Tyler play the guitar, it’s the third day of ninth grade and he’s sitting on a beanbag in Tyler’s room eating chips. “Hey,” says Tyler, “I’m gonna play for a while, if that’s alright,” and he had been Mason’s only friend at the time, and Mason was already kind of starstruck, so he had agreed easily. 

Tyler had settled down on his stool with his guitar, started nodding along to some invisible beat, humming softly, plucking chords and strings. It was a song Mason had never heard before, quietly complex, and Tyler spent maybe half an hour going over the same few chords, picking at new strings and humming in tune, face screwed up in concentration. Tyler still spends a couple hours a day writing songs and refining tunes, but now he hosts parties and has enough friends that overlook it, for the most part.

Mason doesn’t know how many people Tyler knows who really take the time to listen to him talk about– anything that he really cares about. But that edges into melancholy territory, and that’s not a good place to be, coming down from being buzzed on a just-friend’s couch on a Saturday night. 

Eventually Tyler takes off his headphones and comes to sit on the couch, shoving a controller into Mason’s hand and hauling Brownie up off the floor to make him play too. Mason is used to being the ritual sacrifice to Tyler and Brownie’s competitiveness at this point, and he slumps dramatically over the back of the couch as he dies again. 

“Get good,” Tyler tells him absently. Mason flips the back of his head off. 

“I gotta get home, dude,” Mason says about an hour later, shoving at Tyler’s shoulder. He’s pinned to the couch by the full weight of Tyler’s body, slumped there dramatically after losing the tiebreaker round, and his legs are beginning to go numb. There’s nowhere else he’d rather be, but he’s a zombie in the morning and if Tyler falls asleep on him—well. 

He’d rather not be an obligation, that’s all. Besides, his phone is dying. 

Tyler makes an unintelligible noise of protest and turns his face back into Mason’s chest. Mason’s breath hitches. “Come on,” he says gently, trying to wriggle out from under while disturbing as little as possible. 

He nicks a few cigarettes on the way out and allows himself a single backward glance at Tyler, sprawled out over the couch, snuffling softly into the dusty pillows. Then he walks out, past the hazy cloud of smoke, up the stairs. The house is a little quieter now, people trickling out, but the music still hammers his ears and the alcohol doesn’t appear to have stopped flowing. 

Tyler moved here one and a half years ago, he remembers. It was never like this before. 

“Wanna hold the guitar?” Tyler asks, fourteen-year-old eyes wide, a little shy but hopeful, like he’s doing something important he doesn’t want to screw up.

“Yeah,” Mason breathes, grinning. Tyler’s guitar is covered with a mishmash of stickers—band logos, comic book characters, sports teams. It’s like feeling something living and very expensive in his hands. 

He carefully plucks a string, then another. Tyler’s eyes are on him, he can tell, and his face is hot from the attention. “Can you show me a song,” he asks, then immediately regrets it, trailing off.

“‘Course,” Tyler says, and then his hands are at an awkward angle, holding the guitar in the spaces between where Mason is cradling it to his chest. He carefully maneuvers Mason’s fingers onto the strings, instructs him to press down, and then strums a couple times. “That’s C.”

“How do you keep your fingers there,” complains Mason after a while, the strings cutting into his fingertips. Tyler just shrugs and grins. “Practice.”

Tyler had played him a song, then, sung along and tapped his foot to the rhythm. Mason hasn’t heard or read any of his lyrics since. He doesn’t miss it often—every song is scraps of guitar, instrumentals, revealing and vulnerable all the same. 

2.

The back-to-school party is even bigger, if it’s possible.

Because Mason’s a good friend, he had helped set up; handling the drinks, mostly, ‘cause he’s become the expert at making punch somehow. Now Tyler’s disappeared somewhere into the crowd, and Mason is standing on the edge, trying to avoid getting pushed in, tugging at the hem of his stupid blue shirt that he’s only wearing because Tyler told him blue complemented his eyes back at the start of junior year. 

“I look fucking dumb, don’t I,” he says to the first person he recognizes, who happens to be a blonde from History last year named something starting with K. 

She gives him a sympathetic look—Kristen? Her name might be Kristen. Possibly Kirsten. “It might be better if you take your shirt off.”

“Thanks,” says Mason, with absolutely no intention of taking that advice, and lets her fade back into the crowd, vaguely in the direction of the punch. There’s no way he’s going to take off his shirt, and there’s no one’s shirt he can borrow without it being weird, which is totally fine. Because he’s fine with parties. Great with them, actually. 

Maybe he should find someone to chat up or something. Isn’t that what normal people do? He surveys the room—actually, not a lot of people are talking. Mostly jumping and putting their hands in the air and, like, grinding, which Mason isn’t sure he’s—coordinated?—enough for. 

“Do you have a spare,” he says, to the first person he can find holding a cigarette. They give him an annoyed look, but produce one from their pocket and hand it to him, and then fade back into the crowd as fast as they humanly can.

It’s lucky he has a lighter. The first deep inhale is awful; it tastes like shit, and Mason abruptly remembers why he never smokes outside of parties. The second is okay.

He can see the top of Tyler’s head occasionally, can hear his laugh from the throng. It’s stupid, being this aware of him. Tyler’s pressed up against a blonde right now, actually, and it’s only eight but Mason would bet real money that he could catch them sneaking off together within the hour. And then maybe afterward he would be lucky enough to snag an invite to Tyler’s basement room, with the blessedly soundproof walls and beat-up guitars.

Alright, that’s maybe a little too pathetic. It is only eight. Other things could happen. Probably.

“Hey,” says Brownie, and Mason jumps about a foot.

“What the hell, man, how did you get there?”

Brownie shrugs. “I’ve been here the whole time. You look like you’re having a crisis.”

“No,” says Mason unconvincingly, pretending not to track Tyler’s head through the crowd. Brownie follows his gaze and heaves a put-upon sigh.

“You could—”

“Don’t,” Mason tells him, a note of warning in his voice.

Mason’s not looking at him, but he swears he can feel Brownie roll his eyes next to him. “You could ask him to dance, you know,” he says. “Could be fun. He would say yes.”

“Absolutely not,” Mason informs him. “And you don’t know that.”

“He would,” insists Brownie. “We could go and ask him right now. Hey, Segs!”

“ No,” hisses Mason, tugging at his arm, but Tyler’s head is already turning. Brownie waves him over before Mason can stop him, sparing Mason barely a few seconds to have a brief crisis and take another hot drag of the cigarette. 

“What,” says Tyler, staring at Brownie expectantly. He had barely spared Mason a glance. His eyes hadn’t caught on the blue shirt. Somehow, Mason feels cheated.

There’s an intolerably smug look on Brownie’s face. “Would you dance with Mason? He’s all lonely, you know, fucking up his lungs in the corner.”

“You don’t have to,” Mason hastens to add. “And I don’t dance. And my lungs are fine. ”

“Sure,” Tyler says, a slow grin spreading across his face. “No, Brownie, you’re right. I do need to save Mase from himself.”

“Exactly,” says Brownie gravely. “Smoking isn’t a joke.”

Just for that, Mason takes another long drag and valiantly suppresses a cough around it. He’s not getting a buzz yet, but it’ll come. 

Tyler grabs the cigarette out of his hand and Mason just lets it happen, part surprised and part curious. The curiosity wanes as Tyler takes a drag himself and then finds somewhere to put it out, nose wrinkling, replaced with the memory of Tyler’s pink lips wrapped around the space Mason’s mouth had been seconds previous. “What the hell,” says Mason, much too late.

“I’m saving you,” declares Tyler grandly, grabbing his beer. “Now come on. I’m going to teach you how to dance.”

Tyler loves to dance, and he’s kind of awful at it. 

He frowns at Mason. “Get looser,” he orders. “Like—just move with the beat. It’s not like you have to waltz or anything.”

“Easy for you to say,” mutters Mason under his breath, preoccupied with trying not to step on anyone’s feet. He’s wearing white shoes, which he sees now is a massive mistake. It gets only marginally easier to protect his shoes when the song idles out and slows into a beat obviously intended to spell romance.

Eventually Tyler apparently gets fed up with Mason’s extraordinarily low-quality dancing and an arm appears out of nowhere on his waist. “Come on,” Tyler directs, “Just—step to the beat with me.”

Mason feels too big for his skin, Tyler’s arm on his waist, barely there, leaving a heavy, sore indent. It feels wrong that he won’t bruise, even from this feather-light brush. He has to leave but he doesn’t want to. He has to leave but he’s surrounded by lights, crushed in on every side, and Tyler is pressed up against him, laughing. 

Snap out of it, he thinks, because he’s got to, somehow, turn these lights into sirens and process the danger behind Tyler’s dilated pupils, the way he’s started to sway into the space between them. Mason forgets to move his feet. Tyler presses against him like the tide. 

“Do you need a breather,” Tyler asks after a few seconds, face crinkled up in concern. Mason’s head is starting to throb, to be honest; he forces himself to nod yes. 

Tyler carves a path through the crowd, which is kind of disturbingly hot, bodies parting around him easily. He keeps looking back, eyes round with concern, which Mason would probably appreciate more if he weren’t struggling so hard to breathe. 

When they break out of the mass of people, the cool air hits him like a wall to the face. It’s like being in a wind tunnel, feeling all that air funneled directly into his lungs, no chance to reject it. “You good,” Tyler asks, vaguely tactless.

Mason nods jerkily and gropes out behind him for a wall to slide down. 

“Sorry,” he says, once his breathing is back under control. Tyler is still standing awkwardly next to him, clearly trying to decide whether it would be better to look away or at him. He waves it off. “It’s fine. Don’t want to get you killed or anything.” A tight laugh. 

Mason looks down again, counting breaths, and in the space of twenty seconds he looks up and Tyler is gone. 

Okay, he thinks. Right. It’s Tyler, after all. It’s his party. Why would he stay here and babysit a just-friend who’s allegedly fine? 

He tugs at the collar of his T-shirt, feeling—stupid. He should be wearing red or green or anything but blue. He should be somewhere else—taking Ryan up on that offer of edibles, or applying to colleges, or falling asleep on the grass outside. He should stop all this bullshit attachment, distressing one-sided monogamy; text Tyler less and read more. 

“Here,” says Tyler, holding out a beer. 

For a moment, Mason doesn’t process him. He takes the beer on autopilot, stares up at Tyler like he’s some kind of guardian angel for alcohol and dancing. “Thanks,” he says, and then weirdly, plaintively, “You came back.”

“‘Course,” says Tyler, and sinks down next to him. 

He’s not pressing up against him, exactly, but Mason thinks he can feel the warmth emanating from Tyler, the brush of his arm when he brings the bottle up to his lips. He dares a glance sideways. Tyler’s staring out into the crowd, chewing on his bottom lip.

“You can go,” Mason tells him, more cutting than he means. “I don’t need to be babysat.”

Tyler, thank God, doesn’t seem to notice the edge to his voice. He just tilts his head back and says, “I’d rather be here with you.” 

They sit in silence for a while, letting the music and footsteps fill the space between them. Mason refuses to look sideways anymore, just pulls at the hem of his shirt, finishes his beer and sets it down on the ground. The lights have dimmed; one looks like it’s broken. A girl almost trips over his outstretched leg, so he pulls it in toward his chest. 

When he finally weakens enough to dart his eyes to the right again, Tyler is already watching him, oddly intense. 

The air feels charged between them, and no matter how Mason tries to pass it off as his imagination, Tyler isn’t looking away from one blink to the next. Cautiously, Mason turns his head to the right, leans it against the wall. Tyler’s face is at most six inches away from his, every freckle obvious. His lower lip is bitten raw and red. 

Between the space of one second and the next, Tyler closes the gap and kisses him.

There are noticeably less people, a lot probably studying for their finals, which accounts for the unnatural sound of the noise dulling to a low roar. Mason leans against the wall and catches Tyler’s eye from across the room, hiding his instinctual grin in his plastic cup. 

Truthfully, he should be studying too. But he’s always been more of a last-minute study session guy, content to wait until the night before to cram. It’s worked for him up to this point, and it’s the end of senior year, so there’s really no doubt in his mind that it’ll work forever. Besides, there’s Tyler—swaying in his stupidly tight jeans, bothering Zach in the corner, giving a suspicious look to a stain in the carpet and visibly deciding it’s a problem for another time. 

Mason nods his head to the beat and checks his phone for the third time in as many minutes. Same as the first two times, he has no texts or emails. Nobody has posted on Instagram in the last two minutes, which is also a shame. 

“Hi,” Tyler announces his arrival, sidling into Mason’s space. Mason tries not to think too hard about it, the way Tyler insinuates himself into everything Mason does, leans against him. They don’t talk about this. It’s better that way—casual. Probably.

(Actually, Mason really wishes they would talk about this, and preferably agree that it’s something more than casual, so he can move on with his life and worry about something else for a couple months. There is, however, the distinct possibility that Tyler doesn’t see it the same way. It’s not a risk he’s willing to take.)

“You missed me that much,” asks Mason, grinning the three inches down at him. 

Tyler rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth tick up. “No,” he denies loftily. “Just checking on my charity. I’m a good host.”

Mason mock-gasps at that, pretending to be offended. Tyler shoves him lightly, opens his mouth to say something, and immediately gets dragged off by a blonde with a panicked look on her face. Okay, thinks Mason, because this is actually pretty standard. He’ll be back in a minute. 

Here’s the thing: sometimes Mason does think he’s charity to Tyler, or convenient, or just there. Like, okay, Tyler kissed him. Tyler’s kissed plenty of people. Mason knows that plenty well. Okay, so Tyler keeps kissing him. Okay, so Tyler hangs out with him, lets him come over and plays him guitar. He did all that for Tori, too, Mason’s sure, and what happened in the end—she wanted too much from him, and now they avoid each other like the plague.

Mason doesn’t want that. Ever. So he carefully skirts around talking about it, fails to suppress thinking about it, and in general feels awful about himself, because—he likes Tyler, okay?

Tyler, who’s across the room, laughing with a girl from his Biology class. Tyler, who’s leaning in to whisper in her ear.

It’s fine. 

Mason leans against the wall some more. He contemplates figuring out who’s controlling the music and strangling them. He thinks about walking to Target and screwing around until midnight. Tyler comes back and drags him downstairs for snacks and conversation, demands to sit halfway perched on him in one of the dusty armchairs that’s set up in the common area. 

Mason takes inordinate joy in shoving Goldfish into his face as Zach complains about how he’s going to bomb History. 

It’s when Zach has finally run out of things to say that disaster strikes, really. If it were Mason’s choice, none of Tyler’s friends would ever get access to a lull in the conversation. 

“So,” says Ryan, gesturing vaguely, “are you two…”

Mason feels Tyler tense against him. Everything happens in increments. 

There’s a correct reaction here, for both of them. There’s a reaction that’s plain humiliating, where Mason smiles and takes Tyler’s hand and Tyler jerks it away. Mason could lie; could act like he has no clue what Ryan’s talking about. Mason could tell the truth; not that there’s much of it to tell.

But it’s Tyler, sitting up ramrod straight. It’s Tyler, who has a future yawning bright and open in front of him, who has leagues of annoying friends, who could be the gossip of the school without even trying. 

It’s Tyler, who probably doesn’t want Mason; has probably marked him down as convenient, barely-more-than-friend, less interesting than any girl or guy he could pick up but more reliable. Or maybe just stupid enough for Tyler to do anything for him. 

Mason laughs and shakes his head. “What,” he says, appropriately incredulous, “ this guy? Are you high already?”

Tyler doesn’t relax, though, and Mason can barely see the side of his face in this awkward position. “Yeah,” he finally chips in, voice almost too chipper to be believable. “Think about what you’re implying here, dude.”

Ryan, thankfully terrible at picking up social cues, even more so on a hazy Wednesday night, just kind of laughs it off. “Just saying, man. You’re always on top of each other, y’know, just had to…check.”

“You’ve finally lost it,” Mason informs him, with a confidence he doesn’t feel. Tyler isn’t relaxing back into him. Tyler isn’t relaxing at all.

Tyler shakes his head at Ryan, snorts, and swings his legs over the side of the chair to stand up. “I’m going to get a drink.”

Mason stays leaned into the left side of the chair. Tyler will come back, probably. And maybe they’ll need to have a conversation about how much they can touch or talk in public, since Tyler doesn’t want anyone to know, but at least he’ll be here. And then everything can go back to normal, as much as it ever is. 

Ten minutes. Fifteen. Zach is bouncing stupid ideas like buying a motorcycle with the, what, two hundred dollars he has in his checking account. “You think Tyler’s coming back?”

“Dunno,” says Ryan vacantly, hyper focused on his game of Candy Crush. “Sometimes he locks himself up in the room and, like, writes music. You know that.” 

Helpfully, Zach adds, “Maybe he passed out. Or got accosted by that girl who was asking me for his number.”

“How do you even know that word,” Ryan demands. 

Mason extricates himself from the huddle before they really start in on a quarrel about Zach’s vocabulary. He tries the door to Tyler’s room, but it’s locked. He knocks. There’s no response.

Maybe he really did get struck by artistic inspiration or something. Maybe, the darker part of Mason’s brain contributes, he got freaked out by Ryan’s question and now never wants to even interact with him in public again. 

No. It’ll be fine—Mason can shoot him a text and tomorrow morning Tyler will meet him in the hallway like usual. There’s no reason to jump the gun like that. Everyone has off days. 

Mason pauses in front of the door for a few more seconds and then turns around. He nurses a beer against the edge of the dance floor for another fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, scanning periodically, almost unconsciously, for Tyler’s face.

Tyler never shows. Mason sets his bottle down on the ground, hopefully close enough to the wall that no one trips on it, and goes home.

Tyler’s glance slides right over him the next day. Mason’s texts don’t deliver. The worst part of being so completely shut out is that Mason has no idea what he did or how he can fix it. 

Okay. That’s not quite true. 

Because the trigger point had been Ryan bringing them up together, right? And so—Tyler got scared, probably, and decided Mason wasn’t worth people finding out, not that he was anything in the first place. And now he’s completely gone, and even though Mason knows they weren’t healthy, really, he misses Tyler like a limb.

Tyler’s parties are open-invite. Mason would feel bad barging into his house any other way. The only issue is that, this being the last party before graduation, absolutely everybody is here. 

Mason flattens his mouth and tries to look intimidating after a couple of juniors have drunkenly bumped into him. He’s pushing 6’2, he reasons, it shouldn’t be hard to scare people away, even if it feels stupid to be doing that while wandering around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tyler. 

Honestly, he’s scared. 

Anybody could tell you that if Tyler’s not on the dance floor, he’s probably locked up in his room. Instead of going to find him, Mason does laps around the first floor, occasionally staring down at the stairs to the basement. 

The floor is slick with unmentionables when it’s tiled and sticky when it’s carpet. A girl is screaming at her friend in the corner. The next room is darker; someone is sleeping on the floor, a few couples are making out. It’s the same as always, Mason thinks. It’s almost like it never ends, some kind of weird liminal space, Tyler’s house swallowing all of this teenage vice. 

It’s that sort of disconnect that lets Mason, finally, deviate from his planned course and make a beeline for the staircase. 

There are those dusty armchairs. A cooler, cracked open; there are a few lone soda cans floating around in the water. It’s stupid how much this feels like a death march, he thinks, because it’s not like the situation could really get much worse. 

“Hi,” hails one of the guys laid out flat on the poker table. Mason doesn’t recognize him. “Hi.”

The first thought Mason has when the door swings open easily, no resistance, is that he should have gotten a drink. Tyler has his headphones on, leaning forward into the laptop he has set up. Mason can tell the moment he registers him; his eyes snap up, dull, and he stands in one sharp motion, tugging at his headphone wire.

“Tyler,” starts Mason.

“Get out of my house.” 

There’s inexplicable rawness in his voice, which surprises Mason so much that he blurts, “Come on, Ty, it wasn’t that serious—just talk to me, come on—”

“ Out,” Tyler tells him, maintaining eye contact, and, hapless, Mason puts his hands up and closes the door behind him. He stands there for a few seconds, facing it as if he has something else to say. He hears the click of the lock.

What else is there to do? He leaves. 

Mason monitors Tyler from afar, which sounds much creepier than it is. He doesn’t, you know, follow Tyler around, not that he could, considering how stringently Tyler avoids him. He just keeps up with Tyler’s major changes, asks around and ignores the concerned looks.  

Tyler seems fine.

His megawatt smile has grown to the level of a nuclear explosion, gorgeous and all-obliterating. He hooks up with what seems like half the campus. He shows up to class with overgrown stubble and long, shiny hair, and girls slip their numbers into his bag. College suits him, and it’s not his fault that Mason can’t get over high school, so far gone by now that it might as well be another universe.

Mason goes to parties hoping his eyes will catch on a face different enough to wash away the memory of Tyler’s. Every coin and dollar bill echoes his face. He does well enough in school. He makes friends and keeps up with the old.

Mason has in fact successfully avoided listening to any of Tyler’s music for the past two years; he knows that he’s been putting it out, Bandcamp and Spotify, that a couple of his songs have garnered a few thousand listens. He misses Tyler’s music. In a few of his weaker moments he finds himself staring down the play button, feeling ridiculous, but it always feels like the gateway to something bigger and more problematic, so he never hits play. 

He listens to pop and country and, occasionally, what could be termed deathcore. None of it sounds anything like Tyler’s music, but then again nothing does. 

His self-imposed fast, then, lasts until one awful day.

He wakes up, throws up, rifles through the medicine cabinet for anything that could possibly help. Given that it belongs to college students, there’s really nothing helpful. He goes to class with nothing but a hot water bottle and sheer determination to get through the day.

When he finally, finally gets home, he gets a notification on Spotify.

Maybe one of his stupider decisions, then, never to unfollow Tyler, but no one ever accused him of being smart. Either way, the day has been interminable, and his curiosity stirred a little too much by the title and cover art, and he can’t really be expected to do what’s right for himself, right? 

He hits play.

Mason hasn’t heard Tyler’s voice in ages, the sound of his guitar in longer. He hasn’t heard one of his lyrics since freshman year of high school, fresh-faced and wholly unappreciative, blinded by a strange kind of hero-worship, even then.

So these are the first two mistakes: Tyler’s voice is clear and the lyrics obvious. 

There’s a kind of bone-deep heartache in each word, each strum, calluses catching on the guitar string ridges, bringing blood to the surface. Tyler sings about dark rooms and parties and knowing where your heart is and who broke it. He sings like he’s clinging onto youth with pruned, fraying fingernails. 

Mason has always known, kind of, that Tyler had a good poker face. Tyler was good at lying, and making excuses, and fleecing him at Texas Hold ‘Em.

He’s always known that, but it’s only just now sinking in, because–Christ, he had thought Tyler didn’t care. 

“Fuck you,” he had said, and then walked out, and then made sure Mason would walk in on him with Stephanie the next week, hands making the rounds up under her shirt. Stephanie, and then Allison, and Brad, just to make sure Mason knew–it wasn’t that he was a guy, it was that Tyler didn’t give a shit about him. It was that he wasn’t worth a second fucking glance. It was that he was convenient until he wasn’t, a potential something until he made a mistake and got relegated to the level of garbage. Tyler wouldn’t even bother looking at him.

Tyler had written a song for him.

Fuck that, he thinks, eyes closed, earbuds in—Tyler had written an album for him, every last song filled with unsubtle, brash-to-the-point-of-anger references: the day they met, the plastic sheen of the cafeteria lights; the vomit he had cleaned up off Tyler’s floor; afternoon at the park, wildflowers blooming like it had been dawn his entire life and now it was finally sunrise. Fuck. Mason takes in a gasping breath, slams his laptop shut on SoundCloud. Fuck. He has to find Tyler, like, now. 

It’s almost midnight on a Thursday. Unless Tyler has magically become ten times more responsible during freshman year of college—

Mason doesn’t bother with the bike, just sprints, flat-out. The frat house is huge, looming like some kind of spectre of his past mistakes, a couple glow sticks laying cracked out on the sidewalk. He’s never been to Tyler’s room (hasn’t even tried speaking to him since orientation), and  he could be just about anywhere. 

It’s past the double doors, through the hall, through the kitchen (which is filled with low, pounding music and bodies moving to the beat), and two steps up the stairs that Mason thinks that this might have been a mistake.

Tyler probably doesn’t want him anymore. Music is its own form of catharsis, to Tyler even more so–Mason knows that better than anybody. Those songs were probably just to work through the anger. Mason can already see Tyler’s face, screwed up with affected scorn, and the impression of a hand on his own face.

But he owes him this: the truth.

It doesn’t matter if Tyler gives a fuck about him anymore or feels anything for him except anger and embarrassment. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done or said, except that Mason laughed and left and Tyler thought he didn’t care but he did, so much it scared him. So much it still does. 

Mason looks up and Tyler is at the top of the staircase, eyes huge and fluorescent.

“Wait,” is the first word out of his mouth. Tyler looks ready to bolt, deer-in-headlights, and Mason knows if he runs there’ll be no way to find him in this dark maze of a house. “Please. Wait.”

Tyler is still looking at him, and that’s as much go-ahead as he’s going to get. “I listened to your album,” he confesses through numb lips, because he’s stupid, and Tyler twitches a bit, eyelashes brushing his cheek. That means panic, Mason thinks on instinct, and then realizes with a jolt that he still knows reflexively what Tyler’s expressions signify. 

“Don’t leave,” he says, pleading, because Tyler’s shifting from foot to foot, and then swallows through the lump in his throat and says, “I missed you.”

“You weren’t supposed to listen to that,” says Tyler, quiet and distant. The disco lights flare around him, distant, throwing him into dark contrast. The ends of his hair are wet; there’s a tear in his shirt; Mason would bet money that he’s tipsy right now. He wants to hug Tyler and tell him everything will be okay, but he’s forfeited that. 

“I’m sorry,” says Mason, because he isn’t here to explain himself. “I just wanted to tell you that I always cared and I’m sorry you ever had to doubt that.” 

Tyler takes a sip of his beer and sets it on the ground, nudges it to the side with his shoe. It’s the same ratty sneakers  “Sure.”

“Yeah,” says Mason, faltering. Tyler is beautiful like this, is beautiful like anything, falling shy of disaffected, a whiplash mix between abject misery and the barest anger. It’s nothing short of rejection, and he should feel lucky that Tyler’s nice enough to let him down easy, but he feels more words bubbling up and he’s not sure he can keep them down anymore. There’s only so much giving up you can do. There’s no door between them; Tyler hasn’t run. 

Mason takes a step up the stairs. 

Tyler’s head snaps up. His eyes are technicolor, his cigarette is on the ground, and he hasn’t run. Mason takes another step. 

He leaves three steps between them. It isn’t his gap to close. 

“I’m serious,” he says. “I was fucking stupid to laugh and leave. If you still want me to go, you can say that, but please don’t tell me I’m lying when I say I still—I still regret it.”

Tyler’s eyes flit back and forth across his face, verging on uncertain and then hardening. “Fuck you,” he tells Mason, and then closes the gap.

To his credit, he thinks, Mason doesn’t freak out when Tyler kisses him. Tyler is pressed against him fully, hand heavy on his waist the way it always was, and if not for Tyler’s hair falling in waves around them Mason could pretend he’d gone back three years. It’s firm, closed-mouthed, but there’s electricity flickering beneath his skin regardless, like, this is what he’s been waiting for, this is what he was made for. 

It’s when Tyler licks his way into his mouth and presses gently with his teeth at the fragile skin on the inside of Mason’s lower lip that Mason goes, Oh. 

A perfunctory touch, entirely unsexual, but it’s a soft pressing at a vulnerability, I could hurt you but I won’t, I know where to press but I need you to know I won’t. Mason doesn’t doubt that he has an amazed look on his face when Tyler lets go of him, but he’s not really sure he could muster much else. 

“I don’t want to be your fucking friend, Mason,” Tyler tells him, voice breaking slightly on the last syllable, “and I don’t want to be your fuckbuddy. It’s all well and good if you’ve gotten your shit together after three years, but I haven’t, okay, I lied— the songs are a lie. And when I said I didn’t love you anymore, that was bullshit too.”

He takes a step back as if to leave, and, fuck— Mason grabs his hand. 

“Are you actually smashed out of your mind? I’ve been gone for you since I fucking met you, dude.”

Tyler laughs harshly as if in reflex, and then pauses and turns very pale. There are gears turning behind his eyes Mason knows nothing about, he’s sure, and he owes Tyler this—a moment of silence, the stairwell of the frat house, the space to reconsider.

And Tyler closes the gap again, and the romantic would be love and devout admiration but really Mason just feels bone-crushing relief as Tyler holds onto him, cold arms around his neck. “Don’t write songs about missing me anymore,” he says into Tyler’s hair, and Tyler laughs slightly hysterically. 

“No promises,” he says. “But if you won’t be gone to miss...” There’s a question in his voice.

“I won’t,” Mason says. “I won’t.” 

+1.

“You ready?”

“Of course,” says Tyler, bordering on hysteria. He’s got an expression pasted on his face reminiscent of a border collie standing in the middle of the road, staring down a herd of elk. Or something. “It’s just, like, a party.”

“And you threw so many of those,” Mason says, attempting to be reassuring. 

“But I never played my music at those,” protests Tyler, scrubbing at his face. He’d been completely relaxed up until a couple hours ago, which was when it had hit. It was, Mason supposed, an artist’s work to obsessively worry over their art. 

He shrugs. “You did for me,” he reminds, just to be a jerk. “And Brownie.”

Tyler glares from between his fingers. “You know what I fucking mean. I don’t want to disappoint anybody.”

“You won’t,” says Mason confidently, and scrubs his fingers through Tyler’s stiff hair. “Too much gel. Come on. Just get out there.”

“I love you,” says Tyler, suddenly quiet. “Thank you. Now get your hands off my head; I’m gonna go sing songs about you to everybody.” 

“Romantic,” Mason teases, but runs his fingers through Tyler’s hair one last time and lets him go. The backstage is tiny, and the venue is shitty, but there are probably two hundred people here, the slow hum of conversation filtering in. The Inchworms did a great job opening; they had rushed backstage exhilarated, breathing hard, stars in their eyes. Mason imagines that same look on Tyler’s face and a shiver runs down his spine. 

Tyler’s nodding his head over and over, like he’s trying to convince himself of something. His eyes are fixed on the digital clock. When the hand turns just slightly, Tyler stands in tandem, picks up his guitar, and walks out into the lights. 

The crowd screams. Mason grins, stupidly, to himself, and then he jogs through the helpfully simply designed backstage to watch the show from the audience. It’s standing room only, and the room is packed, vibrating with energy, so Mason edges around to the back. It’s alright. Tyler will sing to him anytime he wants. 

“And thank you to the Inchworms,” Tyler’s finishing up, “They did a fantastic job—hey, let’s get another round of applause for them!”

There’s a round of spirited applause, petering out after several seconds. Tyler strums a few notes and Mason grins secretly to himself, rocks back on his heels. “Let’s just get into it, right,” Tyler says into the mic, and the crowd erupts. 

“Alright,” Tyler laughs after a few seconds, voice completely and finally devoid of shakiness. “This song is called Not That I Know.”

Tyler is, of course, brilliant. The venue is kind of shitty, and the lights go out for several seconds in the middle and he improvises his way through it, but (Mason feels not-so-secretly smug over this) Mason was right. His showmanship, all those years making grand speeches to whatever drunk teens were sprawled on the lawn?

They fucking paid off.

“That was amazing,” Mason whispers into Tyler’s sweaty hair backstage after the encore. The sound has filtered out of the venue, everyone slowly making their way out, and Tyler is all his for the moment. “You’re amazing.”

Tyler, wouldn’t you know it, positively has stars in his eyes. He’s sweating from head to foot, probably at least partly courtesy of the halfway broken AC, and he’s wearing a grin from ear to ear. Instead of answering, he elects to kiss Mason hard, which isn’t exactly a hardship.

When Tyler’s breath runs out, he reluctantly pulls back, but doesn’t let go of his grip on the back of Mason’s neck. He can’t seem to stop smiling, dopey. “Good night?” asks Mason, knowing the answer.

“You were there,” Tyler informs him, teasing. “What do you think?”

“It was perfect,” answers Mason promptly, not a hint of hesitation. “Now stop fishing for compliments and kiss me again.”

They kiss for longer this time; this never gets old, this endless closeness, the overwhelming warmth of Tyler’s body through his thin shirt. Tyler’s fingers are rough with guitar-string calluses on Mason’s neck and when they break apart slowly his eyelashes are gold in the light filtering in from the next room. His cheeks are vivid red and his hand is shaking, more even than it did before he went on stage. 

Mason feels the breath get knocked out of his lungs as he processes the way Tyler’s looking at him: like he’s bigger than the world, than all twelve nights of the tour put together, bigger than any lyric in any song.