a/n: not sure why i never posted this one anywhere, but here we are. originally written in 2019.
With his tongue in my mouth Tyler says—well, actually, Tyler doesn't fucking say anything, because he's got his tongue in my mouth, hands on my hips, digging in with the rough pads of his fingers. I'm backed up against the wall and he's rocking us together like we both don't know any second now I'm going to grab his hair and shove him into the mattress and fuck the living holy hell out of him. Which I do, sinking my teeth into his bare shoulder and burying myself eight inches deep in his ass, bottoming out, flesh slapping together wetly in the silence of our house. He laughs out against my hand, which I've slapped against his mouth palm up to replace my mouth, and he says, "Feeling it, aren't we, psycho boy."
Shut the fuck up, Tyler, I say, and I hold his hips for leverage and fuck him until we're both brainless and incoherent. Sprawled out beside me he pulls out his cigarettes and sticks one in my mouth.
"Want a light?" he asks.
I nod. He lights his own first, then touches the tip of his to mine. We lie there, smoking, his arm around my shoulders, staring at the water-stained ceiling. Outside the moon has already set, and the resultant sky is black, starless, and cold. I can hear the factory churning to our right. I close my eyes, press my face against his arm.
With his mouth in my hair Tyler says, "Sleep." I feel him take the cigarette from between my lips. I feel the blanket being pulled up over us both. I'm already asleep by the time he's pulled me further into his arms, but even mostly unconscious I can hear the steady pounding of his heart.
In the morning I go out to get the paper. Tyler closes his hand around my wrist as I'm reaching for the doorknob.
"Hey," he says, tantalizing and tired in his bathrobe and filthy slippers. I let myself get pulled against the kitchen counter. He rocks against my hips, biting my jaw lightly, mouth sleep-warm. He fits his teeth over where he'd left a bruise the night previous and I wince, batting at his shoulder.
Tyler, I say, though I can't put much protest into it. I wanna—
"Let's eat first," he says. "I made pancakes."
I glance out the door. The paper's sitting on the front step. Is this another one of your things? I say, while he smooths me down with his hands: a thumb under my eye, his pointer finger on my cheek. He's tactile. It's some leftover vestige of when I was a kid and didn't get enough attention from my parents. I'd say it's pathetic except for how much we both crave it, and how little it matters: it's just me, in the end, and Tyler's not going to judge me for something he needs too. I lean my face into his hand like a dog and let him run his fingers through my hair.
"My 'things'?" he repeats.
Yeah. Like how you hate when people buy shit from stores, or wear name brands, or do basically anything—
He kisses me to shut me up. It feels kind of like a punch, and a little thrill runs down my spine. We gonna fight later? I say, and he snorts, hand on the back of my neck, leading me to the table. He thinks he's been successful in diverting my attention, and I let him live in his false sense of security, let him serve me decently sized pancakes and syrup and orange juice that's only a little warm.
"Yeah," he says, when we're both eating, "if you want."
Great, I say, and tangle our fingers together.
It's hard to get away from Tyler—before I knew, there'd be times when I wouldn't see him around the house and assume he was at work, or out shopping for us, whatever, but now that I know he's perpetually around. There's no reason for him not to be. So I ask him to go run a cycle in the basement—he gives me a dry look, but he goes—and I rush outside and grab the paper. The headlines aren't really anything interesting, just more shit about the Clintons, and there's an article on page three about the British prime minister, but there's nothing really that I think Tyler wouldn't want me to see. And I'm about to head back inside when I hear a voice calling Tyler's name, and glancing up I see two familiar faces heading up the road: Angel and Ricky. I feel something tense in my spine.
"Hey, Tyler, what—"
What the fuck are you doing here, I say. I glance back over my shoulder at the house. Then at the two of them. They're exchanging glances, the same kind they all used to exchange back when project mayhem wasn't defunct and I'd say something off. They don't know, no one knows outside of Marla, what the truth is.
"You called us here, sir," Angel says. His eyes keep flicking from my hand, which I have clenched around the newspaper, back up to my face.
"Yeah, you said—" Ricky starts, but Angel jabs him in the ribs, and he shuts his mouth.
Well, get the fuck off my property, I say. I don't want you here.
"But, sir—" Ricky's eyebrows are drawn down over his nose. Angel seems to understand better that something's off, because he says:
"We'll come back another time," and drags Ricky back down the street. I watch them go. I can feel myself shaking; I don't realize I've turned back to the house until I find myself nearly at the porch. Tyler's standing in the doorway; the expression on his face says he already knows. Of fucking course.
What the fuck are you doing, I say, as soon as I'm close enough.
He drags his hand down his face. "I told you not to go outside," he says.
Why were they here, Tyler, I say.
He just stares at me. He looks so tired.
Are you working with them again?
He bites his lip. It's a motion that normally gets me to kiss him, but I can barely breathe, suddenly. I say it again, and then I say, Tyler.
His name makes him flinch. Slowly, he nods.
You fucking promised, I say. Embarrassingly, I hear my breath catch. His eyes cut to mine. He says:
"Hit me," and my hand is already curling into a fist before I realize: no. No.
No, I say, and now I see at last a flash of real anger cross his face.
"'No'?"
Yeah, I say. You fucking lied to me, Tyler. Whatever the fuck you've got going with them, I want no part of it. I'm fucking done.
I can feel his own fist curling, and I shove past him before he can do anything with it. Upstairs in our bathroom, way back in the medicine cabinet, there's a bottle of Clozaril. I haven't taken it since I got out of the psych ward. I remember the way I felt, three days after I came home, when I woke up and Tyler was in my door. I remember shoving the bottle into the back of the cabinet while his hands explored my waistline and his mouth my neck.
Tyler's in the doorway now. "Hey," he starts. "You—" But then his eyes fall on the bottle, and he goes very still. He sucks in a breath, tight, through his teeth. Holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
I have to ignore that, for my own sake. You fucked up, I say. I'm still shaking, and a couple of the pills roll into the sink, clattering down to join my teeth in the drain. I can't fucking trust you.
"Yeah, but you really, really don't have to do this—"
I press the pill against my mouth. The dosage is pretty high—"for your condition," the doctor had explained, "because it is so severe and so unusual"—and the effects are pretty much instantaneous.
I really, really do, I say. The blood is so loud in my ears I can barely hear myself.
Very quietly, Tyler says my name.
Something pricks behind my eyes. I have to ignore that, too.
It's done, I say, and put the pill on my tongue, and swallow it dry. I close my eyes against the jerky, thick movement of my throat, and then I keep them closed for a little while.
When I look up again, Tyler's gone.
You wake up to get a drink of water and he's not curled against you. For a little while half-asleep you forget what you did, and you call his name softly as you wander through the hall and downstairs. In the kitchen there's a light on and you say, Tyler, I've told you we have to stop doing that—
There's no response. And then you remember. You grip the side of the sink where you've got the glass under the tap and you try to breathe. The pills make you drowsy and you stumble against the table after you're done drinking. You think of him catching you. His mouth against your neck, his arms against your waist. You let yourself slide to the ground because suddenly the idea of climbing the stairs is too much.
You wake on the floor in the morning, neck aching, sun full in your face. Your cheeks feel stiff where the tears dried overnight on your skin.
You get calls sometimes on the old rotary dial hanging off the wall downstairs. The one upstairs stopped working a few months ago. Usually they're from members of project mayhem. You hang up every time.
"Sir, when are we going to—" Click.
"Sir, are you—" Click.
"Sir, I've gotten several calls from—" Click.
Tyler, you whisper, choking down another pill, staring into your reflection, what the fuck did you do?
You wake up at four in the morning, for no reason. The moon rose late and it's sitting in your bedroom window, yellow with smog, swollen, on its side. It was full when you took the first pill. You remember because Tyler used to make jokes about the two of you being a werewolf.
No. Tyler didn't make jokes. Tyler doesn't fucking exist.
You stare at the moon, swollen, lopsided. Eventually you get up, cross to the window. You wrench it up with difficulty, lean out into the cool air. It would be easy, you think, to tilt yourself a few degrees and fall. It wouldn't hurt, you think, any more than a lye kiss to the back of your hand.
You get a call from Marla. She's checking on you. "Your voice sounds different," she says, after droning on and on about her stupid fucking job.
I'm on my meds again, you explain.
She's quiet for a while. Then:
"So you're not seeing him anymore?"
No.
"Can I come over?"
Your hand starts itching, for some reason. All right, you say, though you wish you hadn't. Marla comes twenty minutes later, cigarette smoke surrounding her like that filthy character off Peanuts. She dumps some groceries on the kitchen table and says:
"Can we fuck?"
All right, you say again. You take her upstairs—to your room, not the other one—and push her against the mattress. She's open and pliant under you, screams at the appropriate moments, but it's not the same and both of you know it. Afterwards she smokes down two cigarettes while you stare out the window at the dying afternoon and choke down bile.
"Call me sometime," she says, on her way out. "I really wanna catch up."
You mean you want to catch up with Tyler, you spit, without meaning to, and her eyebrows arch.
"Fuck you," she says, and she's gone.
You wake up after falling asleep without knowing it. It's the middle of the afternoon. The moon's out—another half, though you don't think it's the same swollen half that laughed at you from the four a.m. vigil. There's an empty bottle of Stolichnaya beside you. The pills and the alcohol are roiling in your stomach. You take it up, smash it against the floor. Glass sprays. The shards are big, and you take one up. You drag it across the mouth-shaped scar on your hand. You're still waiting for the pain to register when the phone starts ringing—you don't want to answer it, so you don't, and eventually it stops. But then it starts again, and you force yourself to your feet, to the phone. With your hand throbbing gently in the background you say:
What the fuck do you want?
"Don't hang up, please—"
It's Ricky. I know his seedy voice best out of any of theirs. Blood is rushing out of my hand and onto the floor so I drag my palm up over my heart in a fucked-up Pledge of Allegiance and say:
You have five seconds before I break this fucking phone—
"Don't," Ricky says again. "Okay, look, just—everyone's getting desperate. Raymond especially. You told him he could spread the word and he did and now people are out for his throat because—"
Wait, I say, and pinch the bridge of my nose without thinking. The tendons squeal like burning tires on asphalt. Raymond who?
There's a pause. "Raymond Hessel?" Ricky says, finally, like a question.
Ray— I have to stop for a second, feeling struck. Raymond Hessel? Raymond K. Hessel?
"Mr. Durden—"
What the fuck are you doing with Raymond?
There's a sound like the phone being fumbled between hands. Then Angel's voice, clipped, irritated, the way it's been ever since I beat him to shit at Lou's:
"You told us to start giving back everyone's licenses," he says; then, grudgingly: "Sir."
I did?
"You said to start with Raymond Hessel, because he was your first. Then Raymond was to spread the word, and you'd get everyone's back to them over the course of a few weeks. We want to help you, sir, but you won't take our calls, you won't—"
Just a second, I say, let me call you back, and I slam the phone into its cradle. Something feels like it's trying to claw its way through my throat. I can't believe this. I won't.
Except—
If Tyler had a plan, and he needed it to be backed up, why would he choose such a flimsy, out-of-character cover story? If Tyler had a plan, he would've knocked me out and done it. Just like he did with the bombs. Just like he did with the country-wide fight clubs. Just like he did with project mayhem.
Oh my God, I whisper, and thunk my head against the wall.
Cabin pressure's dropped to zero. Oxygen—totally depleted.
It takes the usual several days for the pills to work their way out of my system. I'm not sure what I'll do if I'm wrong, but I need to hear it from him. If I've fucked up I want him to tell me.
On the third day, I'm brushing my teeth when I hear a footstep outside the bathroom and then Tyler's behind me. He looks disheveled and upset. Our eyes meet in the mirror. Lightning in the desert. I open my mouth—I'm really not sure what to say—and he grabs my shoulder, spins me around. There's a sudden manic grin on his face and he says:
"Never did get to have that fight, did we, IKEA boy," and then his fist slams into my jaw. I have to catch myself against the sink to keep from hitting the medicine cabinet. My neck snaps to the side with the force of his fist—amid the tension and the pain blossoming there's a certain relief, too. When he comes at me again I'm better prepared for it. He hits my nose, but I'm braced against the floor, and I catch him too, in the mouth. His tooth on my knuckle. He grabs me by the shoulders again, slams me into the wall. He's breathing really hard, like he's been bereft of oxygen for two months. He says:
"Where the fuck do you get off," and that's his fist at my temple.
He says, "You have a lot of fucking nerve bringing me back after all this time," and that's him hitting my stomach. I double over, sharp exhalation. I'm in the process of trying to straighten up when his knee finds my chin and yeah, that's me on the floor.
He says, "I guess you decided it was time you allow me to fucking come out again, must be nice to have that kind of fucking power." His foot shoots out to kick me in the ribs and I grab his leg, jerk it forward. He wasn't expecting that, or maybe he's got an ulterior motive, because he goes down hard, ass on tile. We're level again when I punch him in the eye. The tender skin beneath it explodes in starbursts. The bruise will blossom reddish-purple by this afternoon. It'll cross over into violet by tomorrow.
He says, "You fucking cunt," and sprays blood on the wall when he spits in my face.
Are you fucking done, I say, when it's been about a minute of nothing but the wet sounds of our breathing. Have you gotten it all like, out of your system?
His fist is curled so tight I can feel nail marks biting into my palm. "Absolutely fucking not," he says, and makes to hit me again, so I grab his wrist. The bones grinding under my fingers I say:
You're here to answer a fucking question, okay? That's it.
He starts laughing. His teeth are stained red. "You think you can tell me what to do—"
I don't fucking disappear when someone swallows a fucking pill, Tyler.
He doesn't so much flinch as the skin around his eyes tightens. He's trying to pull out of my grasp so I hold him tighter. I was always the one who pinned him first, even before it meant anything outside of fighting.
"Well?" he asks, sharp, after a little while. "What the fuck is the question, then? Or are you just gonna kneel here all night in your own fucking blood staring at me?"
I lick my teeth, trying to clean off the blood, trying desperately to keep him from noticing, though of course I know he will, because he notices everything. In fact his eyes have already drifted down while I flex my fingers on his wrist and he's seen it, the new scar bisecting his old one. His eyes tighten further, and he opens his mouth to speak, so I cut him off:
I got a call from Ricky the other day.
He goes really still under my hand.
He said that you gave Raymond K. Hessel back his license.
His shoulders shift under his jacket. His stupid red leather jacket.
Is that what you were talking to Angel and Ricky about that day? When you wouldn't let me go get the paper?
Another shrug. He won't look at me. Evasively, he says:
"So what? Yeah, I returned his fucking license to him. And I was trying to get the guys to do the same shit with the others—everyone we took shit from. It was supposed to be—fuck." He drags his free hand roughly through his hair. "You weren't supposed to know about it until it was done. I don't know who the fuck you think you are, being awake constantly like this, making shit harder for—"
You were doing it for me, I say.
His eyebrows draw together over his nose. "So fucking what?" he snaps. He's uncomfortable; his wrist has gone even tenser under my hand, and he keeps shifting around.
You— For a second I can't really talk. There's blood trickling from his eyebrow, and I reach out and wipe it off with my thumb.
"I kept my stupid fucking promise to you," he says, when I still can't say anything, "so maybe the next thing out of your mouth should be a fucking apology for just cutting me off—"
But I cut him off again. Because I'm kissing him. It's a little violent and a little bloody and a little mean, because when he stops trying to shove me off and fists his hands in my shirt to draw me closer his teeth find my lips and instead of dragging along the skin he tugs and then bites, and it's like being punched, like the kiss the morning everything devolved. I grab him back, suck his tongue, his lips, his teeth. I'm holding so hard onto his neck I can feel his sweat threatening to dissolve into my own skin. I get us on our feet, and then I get him against the wall, plaster crackling under our hands, hips fastened together. He feels like a shipwreck beneath my hands. He's making these weird hurt noises into my mouth.
"Don't fucking shut me out like that again," he tells me, when I've pulled away from his mouth—bitten in and bruised and violently red—to work at his throat.
Don't keep things from me again, I tell him, and he rolls his eyes.
"Trust me like you fucking promised," he says.
Touché, I say, and kiss him. He's the one who gentles it, smoothing it into something with more intent; purpose. Before we leave the bathroom he makes me flush the pills—there are ten left, and we watch them slide into the drain to join the condoms and dead fish and whatever the fuck else on the way to the ocean. Then I drag him—or maybe he drags me; it amounts to the same thing, doesn't it—into our room, where on the mattress I make quick work of his clothes and fuck him so hard I can feel the floor through the box springs. We both come embarrassingly quickly. He leaves for a second after to get his cigarettes and I roll over; take up the phone by the bed. I dial Ricky's number and he picks up on the first ring.
"Sir?"
I take a deep breath. Go ahead, I say. Tell Raymond we can start—whatever. It's fine now. It's fine.
I hang up without waiting for a reply and turn back to the door. Tyler's standing in the frame, head tilted, watching me. Wordlessly as he walks forward he holds out a cigarette for me to take, and then his hand, so I can pull him back down beside me. My eyes are hot.
"Steady, psycho boy," he murmurs, clicking on the lighter.
Thank you, I say. I'm not talking about the cigarette.
He rolls his eyes again. "Don't be a sap," he says, but he kisses my temple anyway. Right over the place he hit not an hour ago. It feels just as good.