Title: Existence
Author:
babydrackyDisclaimer: The boys don’t belong to me, unfortunately.
Rating: PG-13 (for some kind of violence)
Pairings(s)/Character(s): Tyler/Reid
Words: 2600.
Written for:
dixidSummary: What happens when Power submerges one of the Covent boy.
EXISTENCE
He was fed up with all those people looking at Tyler. All the time. Some of them trying to be discrete, not really succeeding, and other just standing and staring at him. Since Tyler’s “accident” everybody is talking about it in school. Not just once had Reid hear “Poor Tyler! A so handsome guy… “
Reid wanted to tear them apart limp from limp when he heard them talking about it. About what happened to Tyler. A horrible accident, a naughty stroke of fate. A bad lot. Horrible and deep scars on an angel’s face.
He was watching him, not so discretely himself, from his place in the amphitheater, not listening a word from their professor speech. His clear and piercing eyes were on Tyler’s face, retracing the multiple patterns; the complicate looses the scars drawn, still reddish, on this opal skin. He wished he could let his fingers caress the sensible skin, chase the hurt from those lovingly eyes, make those horrible scars disappear, erase the past. His mistakes.
But Tyler wouldn’t let him. He wouldn’t let anyone eased his burden.
He broke up with his girlfriend the day he left the hospital. She was so lost she couldn’t find her words. Having your hottie of a boyfriend disfigured wasn’t a so easy thing to accept. How hard has it been for that bitch! Not even trying to tell Tyler he is wrong, that it isn’t important! Because it isn’t! In Reid’s eyes Tyler hasn’t changed. He’s always the perfect boyfriend every girl should dream to have and the best friend anyone would wish to have.
Some girls seem to find courage to ask him for a date after a few days. Did they pity him and wanted to make things easier for him? Did they think that now that those scars were so evident on his face they’d at last have a chance with him? He didn’t know. But he was happy Tyler wasn’t blind to believe their kind and comforting words, or perhaps does it hurt him a little more. He really didn’t know anymore.
He just knows that he is responsible for what happened to the guy, to his best friend, his baby brother, the one he betrayed.
##########
The ambient was tense during a few weeks.
Chase had come back and the boys didn’t really know what to do. Oh, it would have been easy if the guy came back and try to kill them but instead of that he just asked for their help and forgiveness. He would try to change. They definitely didn’t want to trust him but how could they harm him when he was just really showing he wanted to improve, to change. They had to give him his chance.
Reid was one of the more reluctant to accept him.
Chase never was one of them and never would be. But they were the only one who could help him, the only one who would understand. Now he does understand why he was so tense around Chase. Because amongst the four of them, he was the one who looks like the more like Chase, the one who could have become him if he didn’t have his friends around him, if he didn’t have Tyler. The gentle Tyler with his so tender smile he would never been able to see again.
Tyler asked him to be careful.
Pogue came to him to tell him to beware. Even Caleb tried to stay cool when he was asking him to stay on the lookout around Chase. But as always he didn’t listen to anyone, not even to Tyler.
And he tried to help Chase. They did spend some time together. And Chase sometimes show him how he is using, how much his power is stronger, how it is eating him, how much he needed to use. Like Reid.
And Reid did use far much more with Chase then when he was with his brothers. And Caleb was angry. Tyler was worried. And Pogue was just trying to make things alright. Until the day he said all of them to fuck off, until the day Tyler told him to stop.
“Stop it! Reid! Do not use anymore!” Tyler wasn’t pleading anymore. It was an order, an angry order.
Tyler has spotted him with Chase when he had told him he’ll go on a date. So what, he hadn’t really lie to Tyler, Chase was a kind of date. But Tyler had turn so angry that even Reid didn’t recognize him.
“Calm down, Tyler” tried Chase, not really helping “We aren’t doing anything wrong. We just decided to have a few beers.”
“I’m not talking to you, Chase!” spitted Tyler angrily to the blond empty head.
“Shut up!” Growled Reid not wanted to listen anymore “I am grown up enough to know what to do and to do what I want!”
“Yeah? Something as smart as using ‘til there is nothing else left of you than dust and bones?” Hissed Tyler.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” Spitted Reid turning around decided to go as far as possible from Tyler. He really didn’t want to argue anymore knowing he’ll have to punch that pretty nose If he is still acting like Caleb the Moralist.
“Reid…” tried Tyler more gently, already sad and sorry to have been able to argue with his best friend, laying his hand gently on his shoulder.
And then Reid didn’t know what happened but the next thing he knew Tyler was flying away from him, his face crashing a shop window loudly, and blood splitting from gaping wounds under the shattered glass.
He had just used on Tyler. For the first time.
He hurt Tyler. For the first time.
Tyler Looked at him. For the last time.
The moment before he was alive, now he was fading away from the existence.
##########
He didn’t go to the hospital to visit Tyler.
What for? Tyler was certainly angry with him and didn’t want to see him. He didn’t want to make a fuss there. He would have time to talk to Tyler when he came back.
That was the only reason. He wasn’t afraid, not at all, that his friend, his Tyl’ would refuse to talk to him ever again.
He wasn’t scare to look at him and saw the bandages the doctors putted him to cover his wounds. He didn’t need them. If some policemen didn’t come the moment they broke the shop window they wouldn’t even had to take him to hospital, they’d have heal him. They could do it. Now they’d have to wait because Tyler couldn’t just heal by magic.
Every night Tyler stayed in hospital, Reid didn’t sleep.
He just couldn’t forget about those baby blue eyes looking at him. Hurt. Betrayed. Scared.
He needed his Tyler to come back and to lie down on his bed like he always did. He needed everything to be like it has always been. Tyler and him against the world.
When Tyler finally came back Reid’s eyes never had a chance to look at those beautiful eyes because the only thing they could see are those ugly and monstrous scares tearing Tyler’s face. His doing. His work.
That hurt more than anything, but certainly not more than Tyler’s whimpers every night when the guy thought he couldn’t hear him and what Tyler has to face every morning with dignity, his reflection.
What was the last strike?
Pogue and Caleb telling him Baby Boy just refused to have those scars healed. Ever.
##########
Two months.
It was two months now since Tyler really talked to him. He barely said a few words to him apart from that they better forgot all about that. “That” perhaps was he talking about him being a prick and a fool, or perhaps that he was once his best friend. Who could say?
Now he was so pitiful without his Tyler that even Caleb seemed to be nicer to him, it seemed to him that he even caught him trying to console him a few times. But Reid wasn’t really sure he could accept anyone to help him and especially not Caleb. Caleb, the one who should have blamed him! The one who should have make him even more pitiful if possible. But no, Caleb had been the perfect big brother, but, in the end, Reid felt even more detestable and pitiful.
Now he was sitting here, not listening to a word their mathematics teacher could have said… Anyway he wouldn’t have understood a word. Mathematics doesn’t make sense to him; he has always copied from Tyler. He didn’t seat with his brothers because he came late today, he even think about not coming at all, but at least during classes he can have an eye on Tyler.
Today was an incredibly annoying lesson about circles and triangles and Reid really wouldn’t even try to pretend to draw one of the figures their old professor was drawing. Instead he was mesmerized by the caliper he was holding.
He never thought about it.
He didn’t really think at all when his hand began to draw a bloody pattern on his forearm.
He was so enthralled by all the marvelous sensation he was feeling. The pain his hands are able to, at last, turn against himself.
He loves his tattoos. All of them. He does really love them. Because of what they meant to him, not so much the patterns but the meanings. He loved getting them. The pleasurable pain they offered him, the pain to forget. But all of that was nothing compared to the lancinanting pain the point he is using gave to him. This was liberating.
At last. The pain in his forearm was stronger than the pain in his heart.
He never heard the girl’s scream.
He never knew all the people in the classroom looked at him.
He just saw Tyler’s inexpressive eyes. Tyler who never moved. And Caled being the first one next to him, covering his bloody forearm in his jacket shouting to people to call an ambulance.
Better leave me bleed to death he would have said if they would have asked him.
##########
Tyler never came to visit him.
He didn’t deserve him to come, he knew it. But sometimes they’re going out, the four of them together, like they always had and then even him succeeded to pretend that everything will be alright. But Tyler didn’t even come to pretend. He definitely didn’t even deserve him to pretend. He knew it.
He didn’t like to sleep at hospital because he didn’t feel anything.
The nurses always insist him to take his pain killers when he just began to really feel his arm hurting and then he fell asleep never being in pain. Never having a nightmare. Next time he decides to play with his caliper he’d do his best not to be caught! He promised that to himself.
For the first time he felt the pain.
He was sleeping, he knew it and though the pain was here, awakening him little by little, he felt good. When he opened his eyes he was here, sitting next to him. Caleb and Pogue would tell him later that Tyler has always been next to him when he was sleeping, never leaving his side before he awoke. For now, his eyes just saw that beautiful angel he thought he dreamt about every night. Looking at the Angel’s hands he was seeing those graceful and pearly hands taking off his bandage, little by little, too gently, the compress stuck to his forearm hurt the most.
He shouldn’t be so careful. He didn’t deserve his Angel to be gentle to him. To be here.
The long fingers crossed over his damaged skin, ghostly following all the bloody curves reopened when the compress was took off, discovering the letters he had engraved in his own skin; his name.
“Have you lost your mind?” whispered Tyler, crying.
“I lost you” was Reid only answers. By losing Tyler he lost everything.
##########
It was raining.
Not just raining, pouring. A strong wind is blowing outside, crushing the rain against the small window. A weather Reid never loved. He likes sun and warm. Not wet and cold. But he is still smiling.
Tyler has always loved the song of the rain. It strangely makes him deeply content. Always.
And once more Reid can hear Tyler sighs happily, knowing he was curling and stretching like a lazy cat enjoying himself. And Reid smiled wider. There is nothing else in the world that he prefers than his Tyler happy. Let’s rain everyday if it makes Tyler smile!
“Sleep well?” Asked Reid knowing Tyler has awakened, now that his nose is drawing curves on his forearm. Rewriting his name.
Since that first night Tyler shared his bed, Reid refused to let him go back to his, his place being next to him, his head on his forearm. Scares on scares.
Tyler didn’t answer him. And because a long sigh couldn’t be a proper answer, Reid asked his question again, his nose tickling Tyler’s short hair, his lips brushing the curve of his neck.
“Awakening is even better” smiled Tyler turning around to face Reid, sleepy, with big dark rings under the eyes.
Reid gazed at Tyler a long moment, knowing he is missing something important. Then he saw it, or rather didn’t see them. His scars. On his forearm. There aren’t scars anymore on his forearm.
“Tyler, you didn’t…” He tried to speak but only succeeded to stutter.
“I did” Was Tyler only answer and his eyes clearly said that they won’t talk about it.
“Then, let me do the same, Tyl’, please” And Reid was really pleading, his hand on Tyler’s cheek. He loves his Tyler whatever, scares or not, but he just couldn’t stand to be the one responsible for those.
“Not yet…” Answered Tyler, his eyes as soft as always.
Reid yelped like a hurt animal.
“Shhhh” Smoothed Tyler, his hands in Reid’s hair “Reid, I’ll let you cure me only if you succeed to cure yourself from that poison, only if you forgive yourself for what you’ve done. Have we got a deal here?”
And Reid could just nod. Too happy knowing his Tyler wants him to be forgiven.
That first kiss he laid on Tyler’s scared cheek was the first one of a lot of others, and kiss by kiss, the scares would fade away. Reid can just hope that his culpability will die out thanks to Tyler’s gentle smiles every time he is now using on him.