Work Text:
LaVonte Worthy and HJ Wingstreet are really fucking weird.
They’re paying Tyler enough to not care about it, though, and he doesn’t just mean a paycheque. It’s the free tech and the watches, it’s the charging everything to the company account and the paying for his grandpa to live in Silver Meadows which- Tyler doesn’t really know what you’re supposed to do when you’re indebted to someone forever, especially when those guys are your new bosses from out of town.
Regardless, it’s enough for Tyler to put his blinkers on and do what they tell him to do and not question their strange hours or their strange friends or their strange relationship. To put it simply – it’s none of Tyler’s fucking business.
-
Olivia is worried about him, and he doesn’t want to talk to her about it because if he does, she’ll tell him to quit, and he can’t quit.
Olivia came here from out of state. She’ll round up her four years in Purpee and then she’ll head back out to the East Coast (probably, if she hasn’t been charmed by the north-western landscapes). He’s not going to complain about gaining a friend, but he does thinks she’s stupid for coming to Oregon when she’s smart enough for the Ivy League. Olivia should have gone to Brown in the same way that Tyler should’ve gone to Stanford, the only difference is that Tyler couldn’t and Olivia just… didn’t. Sometimes he has to temper the impulse to shake her by the shoulders and ask what the hell she’s doing here.
He’s been slacking on being a good friend recently and he knows this. It’s not even like he has a ton of friends, it’s kind of just Olivia and Dan, so when Olivia asks if they want to come over for movie night and pizza he can’t turn her down again. It’s just that it’s a lot – it was already a lot with his grandpa and his course load, but now he’s got the Worthy and Wingstreet gig and now he barely has time to eat, let alone shower or sleep or hang out.
They’re sitting on her sofa watching Ocean’s Eleven. she watches him devour three slices of pizza in two minutes flat - he hadn’t realised just how fucking hungry he was - and he can feel her growing discontentment. It’s like she can read on him how long it’s been since he had a full meal.
He can’t quit. Forget the money or the perks or the opportunities for growth, if Tyler quits, they’ll surely stop paying for his grandpa’s care and he’ll be right back to square fucking one.
“Ty,” she says, as he inhales his fourth slice. “Are you sure you’re-”
“I’m fine.” And he is – he is.
When he’d first told them about the internship, Olivia had beamed, all bright and glittering, and Dan had picked him up and spun him around, because they both knew how much this means to him, but now he feels them share a frown over his head.
His jaw aches. He didn’t realise he’d been clenching his teeth.
-
Tyler’s actually not that embarrassed to say that Zaeth scares the shit out of him.
It’s less what Zaeth does and more so just how he does it. Lurking in wait in the dark, the lilt of his voice that feels like a loaded gun. He tells Tyler to get on the back of his horse and he just… does.
They’re riding through town to the nearest 7/11 and Tyler’s crying in a way that he’s never cried before. It’s just spilling out of him silently, sliding down his face and dripping onto his shirt. He’s holding on tightly to Zaeth’s waist and it’s making it worse, feels like he’s wrapping his arms around the wolf that’s got its teeth around his neck.
The thing is, he knows that this is so fucking important. He knows that one wrong move and something bad happens – he doesn’t know what, but he knows that it’s bad and it’s probably going to hurt. Zaeth is the one leading, but Tyler thinks he knows what this is. Zaeth – who is all denim and teeth and claws – is taking a risk on him, is showing his vulnerable underbelly, and as long as Tyler plays it safe, it might mean earning his trust.
So, he helps him buy the notepad, helps him pick out pencils, pays at the register without a fuss. When he catches him watching him log the receipt with wide eyes, confused and a little overwhelmed, he explains what he’s doing in the least condescending manner he can manage.
To his credit, Zaeth absorbs what he offers - agrees to pencils instead of pens, agrees to getting a saddle, keeps asking what Tyler thinks would be better or easier. It’s all with an edge of forced dispassion. Every other sentence leans into how much Zaeth doesn’t give a shit and Tyler has to pretend that, yeah, of course he just abducted Tyler to help him buy a notebook from 7/11 because he doesn’t care.
“You’re all right,” Zaeth says. It doesn’t stop Tyler’s heart from pounding, he’s still dizzy with fear, the bitter taste of adrenaline in the back of his throat, but it does mean that he’s not fucked up.
“Thanks man.” He’d probably still be crying if his body had anything left in it.
-
He starts having the same dream, over and over. In it, he’s running in a forest and there’s something chasing him. He never sees what it is, but he knows that if it catches him it’s going to kill him.
He always wakes up just before it does.
-
He gets more one-on-one contact with Mr Worthy than he does with Mr Wingstreet and that’s a good thing. Tyler’s noticed that he gets antsy if he spends too much time around HJ.
LaVonte is less… unnerving. He’s got just as much intensity, but HJ has this way about him that sets Tyler’s teeth on edge. His eyes are odd, pale and piercing like a cat’s, always looking at him, and his face is too sharp, preternaturally handsome to the point where it starts to distort. The resulting effect is a feeling similar to that of being inside the lion’s enclosure.
“You’re doing a good job, kid,” HJ tells him. There’s sweat on the back of Tyler’s neck, and it doesn’t always feel like he’s doing a good job. Most of the time it feels like if he stops moving then his legs are going to give out.
“Thank you, Mr Wingstreet.” It would be rude to wipe the sweat away in front of him. HJ is always immaculately groomed, Tyler’s never seen a single drop of perspiration on his forehead.
“The tie looks good too.” HJ reaches out and adjusts the knot at Tyler’s throat. He swallows reflexively as the back of HJ’s knuckles brush against his Adam’s apple.
HJ pauses, looks at the stretch of Tyler’s neck and hums. Then, he hooks a finger between the collar of his shirt and Tyler’s throat and feels around. His hand is so cold that it cuts through the lack of sleep and the piles of caffeine that have been fuelling Tyler for the last sixteen or so hours.
“Your shirt’s the wrong size,” HJ says. “Collar’s an inch too big. You should talk to LaVonte about getting something tailored – any good tailors in town? We’ll sort it. Connect with LaVonte. Here-” and then he takes his hand away from where Tyler’s pulse is hammering, and he reaches into his breast pocket and brings out a fountain pen. “- take this. Made in the Swiss Alps. Finest pen that money can buy. This is a pen worthy of one of our associates.”
“Thank you, Mr Wingstreet,”
“Good man.” HJ smiles -a couple teeth too wide, the corners of his mouth sharp as a straight razor. It stretches his face out in a way that makes Tyler’s stomach flip.
Tyler takes the pen.
-
He holes up in the library for a few days to try and grind out the last few thousand words of his ‘Economics in Context’ essay that he’s been putting off. His phone in on do not disturb, all notifications silence apart from LaVonte’s texts, because if he needs something, Tyler needs to know.
A guy puts his backpack on the desk next to him and he doesn’t pay it any attention until he says his name.
“Hey, Tyler, right? Morimoto?”
He looks up.
The guy is tall, cute – fresh young face, broad shoulders. Very clean cut, very out of Tyler’s league. He recognises him. Aaron, he thinks. They’ve taken classes together before.
Aaron smiles at him and it’s warm, bright. Something about it eases the knot in Tyler’s stomach that’s been a constant presence for the past few weeks. Without thinking, his shoulders sink about an inch.
“Aaron,” he introduces himself, “Bow.” And offers out a hand.
Tyler has the sense not to say something stupid like: I know, and settles on accepting the handshake and returning a very neutral:
“Hey.”
He’s suddenly very aware that he probably looks like shit – hair sticking in every direction, Worthy and Wingstreet tie loose and askew, eyebags upon eyebags. It’s not like he thinks he was going to dazzle Aaron on his best day, but he’d have appreciated not looking like he’s three days down on sleep. His hair is greasy and his clothes are creased and all he’s eaten in the past forty-eight hours is Red Bull and a chicken Cesar wrap that Oliva had so lovingly dropped off for him.
“I’ve seen you around. You’re an econ major?”
An alarm bell goes off internally and maybe Tyler’s being paranoid. He’s got an econ essay open on his laptop right now, has an econ textbook open on the table, but there’s a nagging sensation that this guy knew more about him than he knew in return.
“Yeah. I’m a senior.”
“Did I hear you’d bagged an internship as well? New business in town scooped you up.”
Oh. That’s- that’s not paranoia. The knot in his stomach begins to retighten itself.
“I’m an associate now, actually.”
“Cool. That’s a pretty fast promotion.”
“I guess.”
“There’s been some weird stuff going on in town recently, since they moved here. You notice anything like that?” Aaron’s still talking in a casual voice, calm and measured, but Tyler’s shoulders have risen again and he’s starting to feel like he’s in the middle of an ambush.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look, I’m kind of in the middle of something here.” His voice is cold, clipped. He almost doesn’t recognise it.
Aaron doesn’t try and combat the hostility, just holds his hands up and backs off.
“Hey, man, didn’t mean to disturb you. I’ll leave you in peace, but here-” he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a slip of paper with a string of numbers carefully written out on it – “if anything comes to mind, drop me a line.” He puts the slip of paper on the desk and Tyler just looks at it.
Aaron doesn’t hang around to see if he takes it, just picks up his backpack and saunters off, disappearing into the stacks.
It takes several minutes of Tyler breathing in and out and staring at the digits on the paper until they blur together, but eventually he comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t need to tell LaVonte about this. Some things don’t need to be passed up the chain of command – LaVonte doesn’t want him to bring him problems, he wants him to bring him solutions. So, he takes one last deep breath and then turns back to his essay.
About four hours later, his essay’s done and he’s ready to leave. On his way out, he drops the phone number into the wastepaper bin and that’s the end of that.
-
Of all LaVonte and HJ’s entourage (business associates? family? lovers? Tyler doesn’t know the details, and no one tells him, which he takes as instruction not to ask) Vesper is the sweetest.
Tyler doesn’t see her that often or speak to her much. He’s not sure, but he thinks she might also be a student – on the occasion he sees her at Shady Street, she’s often wearing a huge PSU hoodie, and LaVonte had once gotten him to source an information packet on applying for undergrad, specifically for zoology and bioecology courses, although he’d never heard anything more about after he’d handed it over.
There’s something off though. He realises when he’s talking to Dan about her. He can’t remember what she looks like. Or, well, he knows that she has very long white hair and that she wears a lot of black leather – university hoodie aside – and she’s starkly pale, but he doesn’t know her face.
The next time they’re in a room together, he tries to look at her, but he can’t quite focus. His eyes just sort of slide over her.
The same thing happens with Mitch – who is equally as nice but fucking huge, so intimidating in a way that Vesper isn’t. Tyler can follow the line of Mitch’s body – boots, pants, sweater, neck, and then- his attention just slides away.
It falters just once. He’s organising some newly delivered furniture in the kitchen of Shady Street, and he can see Mitch and LaVonte through the doorway, speaking in the living room. He works his way up – boots, pants, sweater, neck and- oh God.
He stops trying after that.
-
The rumour mill is aflutter about the Banksy that happened at Estelle Laurant’s house, but Tyler took Art History 101 a couple years ago, just for the credits, and God help him, he doesn’t think that’s’ what a Banksy is. He didn’t see it though, so who’s he to say anything?
There are also whispers around campus that Aaron Bow has gone missing. It nudges at Tyler uncomfortably.
He’s thinking about neither of these things until he’s spending an evening at Shady Street, talking through some action points with LaVonte, when Zaeth and Madelaine pass through the living room.
“- now we’ve got Bow out the way, that’s one less thing to think about.”
His blood runs fucking cold.
“Guys,” LaVonte cuts them off, sharp. “Tyler is here.” But the damage is already done.
There’s a thudding in Tyler’s ears that it takes him a moment to realise is his heartbeat. Recklessly, he gets the urge to run.
Madelaine zeroes in on him, and he’s never felt more pinned to the spot in his life.
Most of the time, Madelaine doesn’t give him a second thought. She’s maybe the most beautiful person that Tyler’s ever seen, ever, and she’s always had the air of being unimpressed with his… everything, which is fine by him. Zaeth may be unpredictable and combative, there might be something weird going on with Vesper’s face and Mitch’s jaw, and all of them are super fucking intense, but Madelaine scares him the most. He gets the sense that being uninteresting to her is maybe the best thing to be.
She slinks forward to him, movements rolling and liquid, and tips his chin up with two of her fingers. Her smile is so sweet, so vulpine.
Tyler’s holding his breath, has been holding his breath for so long that he feels dizzy with it.
“Ah yes, but Tyler is going to be no problem. He is a good boy, no?”
He didn’t know Aaron by any stretch of the imagination, but they took Intro to Psych together as freshmen. They’re in the same graduating class. They’re the same age. And he’s- they’ve-
The world gets a little fuzzy at the edges for Tyler, just enough of a gaussian blur that he wonders if he’s going to pass out, when a heavy hand comes down on the back of his neck.
“Madelaine,” LaVonte says. It’s just her name, nothing else, but something gets communicated within it.
Madelaine steps back then with a roll of her eyes and walks off with a mutter of “no fun.” Zaeth, who’s been staying out of it so far, gives Tyler a once over, winks, and meanders after her.
“You alright?” LaVonte asks and Tyler nods. LaVonte’s hand is still on the back of his neck and his fingers are ice cold, but it feels kind of nice. Tyler feels like he’s burning up. “You best just forget about that.”
Tyler nods again. There’s a sour taste in his mouth, right at the root of his tongue, but he can’t quite remember what he’s meant to be forgetting.
-
He goes home and throws up. His head is still hanging over the toilet bowl when he hears someone shuffling behind him. Dan hovers in the doorway of their shitty little bathroom.
“Dude, are you okay?”
“I’m good.” His body is cold, his calf muscles cramping. His knees hurt from hitting the floor too hard and his throat burns from the stomach acid. “You should go back to bed,” he says, because it’s, like, 5am and Tyler definitely woke him up.
Dan doesn’t believe him but doesn’t say anything, because Tyler’s not told him enough for him to know what he should be worried about. Tyler knows this because he’s been very, very careful. Dan lingers, watches Tyler shiver on the bathroom floor for another few minutes until he reluctantly slopes off back to bed.
Tyler’s body knows. It knows.
-
Sometimes – and it’s not often, but it’s often enough – he’ll blink awake and there’ll be a chunk of time missing. There’ll be a tenderness to his neck that he doesn’t remember being there before.
This time, he blinks awake and LaVonte is there in front of him, just as Tyler remembers him being, but the time on his watch shows a good fifteen minutes later than he remembers.
“You might need to wash that shirt,” LaVonte says. “Looks like you might have nicked yourself shaving this morning.”
Tyler excuses himself to the bathroom and there in the mirror he sees it – a bright shock of red at his collar. He checks for a cut but finds nothing. There’s blood on his shirt and Tyler doesn’t know where it came from, and he doesn’t know what happened in the last fifteen minutes.
The gap in his memory aches and his neck aches and he presses down on both, but no answers come up.
-
It’s fine until it isn’t, it’s really that simple.
He comes home from work – a whole day of power washing the old lumber mill and setting up so many candles that his hands still stink of paraffin and artificial fruit – and collapses on the sofa.
Dan is in the kitchen cooking quesadillas and Olivia is sat up on the counter beside him. They’re talking, smiling at each other. The overhead light is warm and the whole place smells of melted cheese and spice. It’s nice. Normal.
There is a tremor in Tyler’s hand that hasn’t gone away all week. There’s a lump in his throat so hard and compact that he’s not sure it’ll ever shift. There’s a pressure in the back of his head that just doesn’t lift, hasn’t lifted in… months.
“Tyler?” Dan’s voice cuts through to him.
Both Dan and Olivia are looking at him.
“Huh?”
“I said, how was your day?” Olivia says carefully.
“Oh.” And Tyler knows that he needs to answer but he can’t think straight with how loud his heartbeat still sounds – it hasn’t calmed down since leaving LaVonte at the lumber mill, and neither have LaVonte’s words.
One day, you’ll wear the mask. Not tonight.
“Are you okay?” Dan asks him.
“Fine.” But his voice is too tight, and it just makes Dan and Olivia look more concerned.
Tyler should be fine though. He’s home, he’s safe. Things are normal here, so blissfully ordinary – Tyler’s two best friends in the world chatting and laughing and making food and Tyler should be able to relax into it but there’s a panic in him, something hot and wild and thrashing, and he tries to squash it down, but he can’t. Even picturing LaVonte telling him to suck it in doesn’t help, it actually just makes it worse.
The dam breaks and he starts crying and once he starts crying, he can’t stop. In a matter of moments, the slow wave of tears becomes sobs, becomes gasps, becomes full body shakes. All the stuff that he’s been pushing down just comes rushing out of him in a stream, in a river.
“Jesus, Ty.”
There’s movement and the sofa dips as Olivia sits down beside him, hands hovering but not touching. Dan begins to pace, chewing at his nails. Neither of them knows what to do with him– Tyler doesn’t know what to do with himself.
A couple of months ago, what he wanted was very simple –he’d wanted to make sure his grandpa was looked after and to secure a job after graduation, and that was it. Sure, there were other things on the periphery – grander plans, long-term goals – but the most important and the most pressing were those two. And now he just… has them. They’ve been handed to him by LaVonte and HJ. Internship within the first thirty seconds of meeting; intern to associate fast enough to give him whiplash; HJ swirling in and picking his grandpa out of Dignity, depositing him in Silver Meadows like it’s nothing. Tyler’s got what he wanted, more than what he wanted, so what does he want now?
He wants…
He wants…
He wants to go to work tomorrow. He wants to walk to 9 Shady Street in the cool evening air and the fading light, and he wants to offer himself to LaVonte and HJ to be used in whatever way they see fit. He wants their ice-cold fingers on the back of his neck and the dull pressure of their praise pushing at the softest parts of his brain. He wants to get the three hours of sleep he can fit in before his morning alarm and then he wants to attack tomorrow with his teeth.
HJ’s watch is heavy on his wrist. Almost everything he’s wearing is theirs. It’s either been handed to him directly from HJ or LaVonte – the watches, the ring – or placed on the company card under HJ or LaVonte’s instruction – the shirt, the tie. It’s… possessive. It doesn’t scare him as much as he thinks it’s supposed to.
“What’s happening, Tyler?” Olivia asks and she sounds so scared, but Tyler doesn’t know what to tell her. He doesn’t know what’s going on, only-
Only he does know. Doesn’t he? He knows. Maybe not consciously at first, but there’s always been something inside of him, a pre-programmed instinct that’s been telling him that something is Wrong, that this is Not Good. That he should run. He’s been working on ignoring it, on swallowing it down, on pretending he doesn’t catch all the slip ups and the missing chunks of time and the reflexes that have him flinching and scared and hypervigilant, but sometimes he just can’t. There are moments where he knows. Cold and creaturely, impossibly fast and impassably beautiful. Something dead behind the eyes and sharp in the teeth, and a soreness in his neck that he just can’t explain away.
He knows what they are.
“Nothing’s happening,” he says, voice unsteady.
Olivia’s face sets, grim and fearless.
“You can’t keep doing this,” she says, because she knows too. Maybe not exactly what Tyler knows, but she can see the tension that’s been infesting Tyler’s body these past months. She and Dan have been watching it happen, Tyler’s body grinding to a halt, strung out on survival mode.
“I have to, Liv.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I want to.”
“Why?”
And that’s the question that he truly doesn’t have an answer to.