#tyfay

White-washed walls and the warmth of a thousand suns is how Tyler remembers June.

Tumbling down the hills and smashing dandelions on the way to the foot, laughing as pollen made him sneeze and the butterflies dance. Watching his little sister blaze by on her tricycle, her pigtails gliding in the wind like the unsteady kite his brother piloted over their fence and into their neighbour’s. Stumbling through the back door, mud-streaked pants and all, grinning up at his mother who stood over a pot of macaroni and cheese – this is how Tyler remembers June.

He’s thirteen when it all changes, when they came for him and his talents, and he’s fifteen when they beat him down enough to make him forget what June used to taste like.

When the sun climbs into his eyes at seven in the morning, he remembers the touch of cold, hard metal against his wrists. When he smells weeds in the air, he thinks of how native species can tell him where he is – thinks of how to find the enemy by the radioactivity laced around the delicate blades of grass surrounding the soles of his boots.

He’s sixteen when they send him alone on his first mission – a tiny shop that’s decked out in bright yellow and black. The smell of coffee hits him like a truck and he stops walking when a shock of blue hair and gold eyes squint at him over the glass case holding dainty pastries and dense cakes.

“May I help you?” the man asks, pale hands running over the handle of one of the drawers, and Tyler knows that there are at least a dozen syringes hidden in there, each containing a cocktail of poisons that would immobilize him in an instant.

Digging his hands into his jacket for change, he smiles his most wicked smile and speaks.

“A tall flat white, please. Skim.”

The man eyes him for a moment before letting his hand glide over the till, punching Tyler’s order in and ripping off a tiny receipt. He hands it to Tyler, eyes locked on his, and doesn’t let his fingers touch Tyler’s outstretched hand.

“Two minutes,” the man says, like it’s a command, and Tyler nods easily, grins again and winks when the man takes a step back.

When Tyler gets his coffee, he makes a show of sniffing the steam hovering dangerously over the rim.

“Thanks,” Tyler says, before dumping the entire cup into a sterile bottle, already writing down the different toxins present when the man curses and heads to the back of the shop. “Thanks, Fay.”

He manages two blocks from the café before a group of four surround him, but he weaves in and out of their defences like he’s made of water and they’re grains of sand. Soon he’s back in the bunker, shaking the bottle at his fellow soldiers and being debriefed.

An hour later, the café mysteriously sets ablaze, and everything is burnt to cinders in a matter of minutes. Tyler stares at the news and sips a cup of juice that’s cold and wet and stings his mouth.

He’s sure that nobody is hurt at all despite there being reports of a body or two.

He’s nineteen when he’s offered his first long-term mission.

Tyler takes it without hesitating. He puts on his black-and-blue jacket and stores his weapons in the hollows of his clothes, taping emergency bombs to his ribs like it’s second nature. Dog tags hang loose from his neck and he swings it to the back so that the cold metal hits against his spine, reminding him that he could die at any time, reminding him that the mission must be completed at all costs.

His name isn’t Tyler for a month. Instead, he’s Ethan, lets his hair run unruly and free, wears mismatching socks, and kisses girls though he tastes bile in his own mouth.

He spots his target, a red-head boy with a smirk, and learns the contours of his body like it’s the map he needs to escape from this hell. The boy is young and eager, barely fifteen, and kissing him is different from kissing the girls, but there’s the dog tags again – hitting his spine each time he bends into a kiss, reminding him that time is short.

They only make him push against the boy harder.

It isn’t a surprise when the boy draws a gun to Tyler’s chest, teary-eyed but fierce. He says that Tyler’s taken his sister, which is a lie, because Tyler’s never killed a red-head girl before. Tyler tells him so, hands still on his naked hip, and the boy grinds out that his sister was a girl with violet eyes and silver hair.

Tyler doesn’t say anything to that, because now the lie’s become a truth. He also doesn’t tell the boy that his sister tasted like lime and nicotine; instead, he stares at the boy while he struggles to pull the trigger. He smiles ruefully, wonders if there’s a time and place where they’re older and less susceptible to ideas like duty and obligation, and stabs the boy with a syringe.

The boy collapses, gasping but not sobbing, staring at Tyler through lidded, emotionless eyes as he takes his final breaths. In a surge of feeling he hadn’t felt in years, Tyler swoops down, kisses the boy, and steals his last breath from him. He feels a shudder run through the boy before he stops moving, and Tyler leaves him there, sheets haphazardly thrown over his skin and the sun shining through the hotel room’s heavy grey curtains.

He rushes back, washes the spray tan off his body and the blonde streaks out of his hair. They place a red cross on top of the boy’s photo. Tyler scrubs at his hands harder, can’t ignore the vicious trembling he feels through his chest that reverberates throughout his body.

Sleep comes easy that night, though the dreams that plague him are all of the red-haired boy and his smile. Tyler dreams of his teeth that are small but sharp, his tongue that can stretch halfway down his chin, and his fingers that drum along Tyler’s wrist to the rhythm of a slow jazz song.

When Tyler wakes in the middle of the night, visions of warm, soft, white sheets in his mind, he wakes up smelling steel instead of the sea.

He feels a pull back to sleep.

Tyler takes it without hesitation.

Twenty-three and he’s scaling the vertical side of a building, hands and feet moving fast as the wind that whistles around him to avoid being hit by the darts a girl is throwing at him.

Tyler doesn’t know how she tastes, but can guess from her thin mouth and her bouncing ponytail. He catches her foot and sends her hurtling down, and wills himself not to take a look at her disappearing towards the streets.

He knows that she won’t die, though, so he continues his ascent.

The blue-haired man is waiting for him, like he always is, and Tyler catches a moment of sadness in Fay’s eyes when he realises that Tyler is unarmed.

Tyler’s terribly young, his dog tags hammering against his spine, and his weapons used up and stolen by the men below.

“You’re alone,” Fay’s voice is tight in his throat, and Tyler wants to kiss him senseless.

“I’m alone,” Tyler replies, and finds the air thick and dry. How this happens is unknown to him. “So are you.”

“So am I.” Fay echoes, needlessly, and he takes his time walking up to his desk.

Tyler doesn’t move. He’s unmatched, and he knows this. But he’s also tired, so very tired, and he wants to see his little sister again. He wants to remember the June sun on his freckles and the sound of her laugh thrilling the air. He wants it so badly.

Fay opens his drawer and takes the syringes out, one by one, while Tyler stares and stares and feels his bones slacken.

“They’re pretty,” Tyler’s voice is useless, as is the rest of his body, and Fay picks up a golden one. Gold, like syrup, with flecks suspended in its viscous liquid, and Tyler’s mesmerised by its beauty. “Fay, they’re all pretty.”

“Yes,” Fay’s walking to him, eyes burning right through Tyler’s chest to land on the dog tags. Tyler isn’t surprised that he knows they’re there. He’s surprised that no one has looked at him like that before.

Fay slides the syringe into his pocket and levels his eyes with Tyler’s.

“You want to know what I taste like.” Fay says, and Tyler looks away.

Fay tilts his head, like he’s trying to fathom Tyler out, and hums. It’s a slow jazz song, and tears prick at Tyler’s eyes.

Fay kisses him, long and slow, like how Tyler kissed the boy, and cups his jaw. Tyler loses himself and kisses back, searching for something he won’t find, his body shaking and his legs losing feeling.

“Socrates,” Fay murmurs, “But you never asked with your mouth. You always asked with your eyes.”

Tyler can only hum in response, the same song, and grabs Fay by the waist, holding him close and feeling his dog tags burn his skin.

They kiss and touch for ages, before Tyler finally, finally feels the prick of the needle, and tears fall down his cheeks.

Tyler refuses to stop kissing Fay, even when Fay tries to speak to him, even when he wants to speak to Fay. Eventually, Fay gives in and lets him taste the same steel and metal and heartbreak he knows so well.

When he feels his legs give, Fay lowers them to the ground, holds him and lets his blue hair fall over Tyler’s green eyes, shielding them from the dark skies outside.

Thank you, Tyler says with his kiss, and Fay can only nod.

Tyler doesn’t say that he tastes the sun and fresh-cut grass too. He never gets to say that that’s why he chased Fay this time, never gets to say that this isn’t a mission but a quest. But he knows that Fay knows. He dies knowing that he makes Fay lose his home, too, and dies satisfied.

Tyler doesn’t get his last breath.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: wow havent written a tyler/fay/jc/coco fic in sooooo long but i got inspired by kel’s doodle so ofc i had to write for 2h (its 12am now & i have work tmr oops)………………….i hope it isnt too bad i cant tell

all feedback is appreciated!!!!! & for extra info:

----

Made of threads, fragile apart and strong together, he was the machine they prayed years for.

 ‘FAY.E’ was the writing on the inside of his left wrist and the plaque hanging above his cell, gold-plated and engraved, yet cold as the wind bites on Mount Everest. The cell was painted grey - a world of colour was meaningless to a product of bolts and thread, after all - and his ‘bed’ was a horizontal, flat metal tray with gold cables and wires protruding into the empty space he would occupy every few days. Recharging took up a whole half-a-day, and checking happened twice a month, the only rest days he got in his entire life of fighting and working for his ‘father’.

 He was twenty-years-old when measured in human years, but he looked older, more mature, thanks to the designs of his mother. Created when she was forty-over, he was her precious masterpiece, the robot she had programmed perfectly, the invention she bled and suffered for for years on end without complaint.

 On the day he was born, he remembered opening his slits to a bleak room of grey and blue, his arms by his side and his body flat on a steel operating table. He remembered staring up at the ceiling, registering the source of light as ‘dim’ as catalogued in his database, and remembered sitting up when he heard the command to do so.

 Then he saw her.

 In a room that no sun could light up, she was the light that registered as ‘nurturing’ in his database. He remembered her taking his hand and marvelling over how smooth his shell of string was, and how faultless the complexion she had created for him was. She had smiled at him, and he had smiled back as a programmed reflex, but she did not hold the smile, for it soon dropped into a concerning frown, and he had reflected the same expression onto his face.

 Soon after, as he was going through the process of training for his intended purpose, and did not see her for months after. Vigorous, dull routines of spinning thread from his body to create flexible weapons meant for destruction filled his days, and he soon became accustomed to twisting and moulding his form to better infiltrate, better attack - he became the perfect weapon in mere days, but months of conditioning made his movements as fluid and as clear as mountain water travelling down its God-given waterfall.

 Six months into his life he was brought back to the same operating theatre for his check-up. He was greeted by his mother again, smiled when she smiled again, frowned when she frowned again. She lay him down and plugged his limbs and brain into cables, thick and heavy gold cables that would connect his system to the main computer. He looked up at her as she looked with concern at his face, and noted how pale and gaunt she looked.

 He licked his lips and said his first words.

 “Mother,” he spoke, and she gasped in surprise. “You look tired.”

 His mother took a step back, a trembling grey hand covering her cracked lips. Her pale blue eyes, shadowed by eye bags and dark circles, seemed to shine as tears threatened to fall. She soon recovered, however, and stood over him smiling proudly down. He returned the smile.

 “I’m fine,” she replied, her voice smooth and warm, like how his database described a ‘sunrise’. “This will be worth it.”

 He tilted his head on the operating table, and she pressed a button on the computer. Immediately, his world turned black, and he went into standby as she uploaded the upgrade onto his database.

 Limbs tired, muscles worn down, head heavy as lead, she worked on him for hours into the night, making sure that everything was fitted right into him and that there were no errors to be found between his strands. She stood over his glowing form as the information was uploaded onto him, placing her hands on his soft arm and feeling him warm up with the codes being input into his body.

 “This will be worth it.”

 —

 He woke up after that with new programmes he had never experienced before. He teared when he saw her for the first time again, and he felt warmth fill his metallic form when she hugged him in joy. He could not understand what it was like to feel before, but now he could, and his non-heart seemed to beat in tandem with the soft whirring of his energy source.

 He went back to his cell that night feeling reborn and remade. Though his parts and functional coding remained the same, he was completely different. He could no longer be the emotionless, vacant machine they sought to create. He could no longer be entirely flawless. He was a step closer to being human, and the gratitude he felt towards his mother for making him threatened to overload his circuits and fry him to a crisp, but it didn’t. He wondered what it was like to feel all the time, to be a person who was constantly assailed by the whims and fancies of the world, to be someone who cried when they were happy or sad, or both, or neither.

 Overwhelmed with his newfound self, he closed his eyes for the first time in a long time, and rested like a true human would on his switched-off charging mat.

 Placing two hands over his chest, he made-believe that he was dead, and wondered if anyone would care if he died.

 He wondered if he would care if anyone he knew died.

 —

 Three weeks after his emotions upgrade, his mother passed away.

 Over-exhaustion was the cause. Her colleagues had found her slumped over her computer, her last words being the half-written code she had intended for FAY.E to inherit.

 His father, her boss, boiled over with fury and rage when he found out. He ordered for him to be kept away from all programmers, and refused to allow any of his staff to see him more than once in their lives. Convinced FAY.E had pushed his mother, the best scientist in his entire organisation, to her death, he labelled him as taboo and kept him locked up, only releasing him from his cell to fight for his organisation or to undergo repairs.

 One day, when he was five, he was called back to the place he was born, and was forced into a state where the heart his mother had given him was locked up and beyond his reach. After the reprogramming, FAY.E reverted back to how he was before he knew his mother, and all he remembered were her actions and words to him. He could no longer feel the warmth he had saved into his mind, he could no longer reach back into a time when he felt real. He could only be what he was - a figure of metal and thread, unwinding to serve the sole purpose of acting as a puppet for his father to achieve victory over his rivals.

 The fearful weapon he became unleashed fear and terror into his father’s rivals, and he fought without considering any thought for human life. All reason and regard had been wiped from his mind, and all that existed was the drive for fulfilling his pre-programmed goals. He was the ultimate vassal, obedient and biding, terrifying and silent. Without a word he would cut down defences and infiltrate bases, destroying them from within with stunning dexterity. Pride was his father’s most-worn sin, and he had a large part in creating that sin within that man.

 This continued till he turned twenty, his daily life being that of sitting in the dark of his cell or of soaring across the blazing heat of a battlefield. He swung his thread at enemies, his specialised skill raining down like torrents unto his enemies and striking them at their core. He remained nothing but a tool for years, spurred by nothing and restrained by nothing. There was nothing distinguishing black from white but the calculations of presence of light by his mind, and there was nothing distinguishing good from bad but the wills of his father and his organisation.

 He knew nothing; he was nothing.

 And then he appeared.

 —

Tyler Reynolds was a member of a rival organisation, hard set on bringing down HAZARD, the organisation FAY.E was part of.

 He knew what FAY.E was made of, knew how he worked and how he was programmed. He had inside information, dangerous as it was, and was able to come up with a counter to FAY.E’s seemingly airtight design.

 It took him two years to formulate what he thought was the best strategy to take FAY.E down. Not HAZARD - but once he had FAY.E, he would very soon have HAZARD. He only needed to reprogram FAY.E to suit his mission, and the tables would inevitably turn in his favour.

 The tricky bit, however, was subduing and capturing FAY.E in the first place.

 The operation went down in two main phases, each one catalysed by different events. The first was manned by the front-liners, which acted as a distraction to HAZARD to focus their main forces there. This would lure FAY.E out into the open, and as he made his way through the sacrificial front forces, the second phase would take place.

 Manned by technical strategists, they would surround FAY.E without his sensors detecting them, and they would bypass his security by bombarding him with ridiculous amounts of signals, overloading his system and overheating his circuits. It would be enough to overwhelm him, and it was a hugely costly project, but it would be worth it in the end.

 Tyler put this plan into action right after FAY.E had finished a two-week mission, giving him close to no time to repair or recharge, and sent wave after wave of assault teams in an effort to rein him in. Within hours, FAY.E appeared, barging through the front-lines and reaching the end of the first wave in less time than Tyler had anticipated.

 Tyler hurried to engage his strategists, and they dropped down into positioned. He viewed the operation’s progress through cameras on the strategists, and marvelled in the beauty of FAY.E’s design and conception, his luxurious threads strangling life and coarsely beating those around him to a pulp. It only took a few minutes for Tyler to be wholly captivated by FAY.E’s form, and he smiled as FAY.E was quickly apprehended by his strategists.

 “Good work,” he spoke into his microphone. “Bring him back; he needs fine-tuning.”

He leaned back in his chair as he heard the collective ‘Affirmative’ from his team, and waited for them to bring FAY.E back to his base. Soon, the odds would turn in his favour, and he’d be able to bring down the great power HAZARD in just a matter of time.

 If only he knew then that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

 ----

 It took them less than an hour to transport FAY.E back to the base, and the moment the robot entered the base, they confined him in a specially built box, made of toxic heavy metals and strong, reinforcing alloys. They placed his self in the box and sent him to Tyler’s laboratory, where Tyler was waiting to upload his schematics onto him.

 The moment FAY.E reached Tyler, Tyler pried open the lid and carefully examined FAY.E’s physical state. He had been in fights and battles for the last two weeks, after all, and Tyler did not want a chipped or less-than-perfect model than the FAY.E he knew so well. However, he could find no fault on FAY.E’s thread skin – he was completely free of any scratches or dents, something that Tyler attributed to FAY.E’s remarkable abilities.

 He plugged heavy steel cables into FAY.E’s ports and synced him up with his computer that ran a programme that debugged FAY.E’s system and ploughed through the extraordinary amounts of security blockades that protected FAY.E’s software. After an hour, he was finally done going through the sophisticated technology surrounding FAY.E’s core, and got to rewriting FAY.E’s technology with his own.

 While he was doing this, he chanced upon a locked set of files named simply ‘His Heart’. Intrigued, Tyler unlocked the set of files and took a peek inside.

 Files and files of emotions, reactions, feelings, likes and dislikes screamed out at him from the glowing monitor screen, and Tyler could only look at them in a mixture of wonder and shock as they started to re-download into FAY.E’s database. He could’ve stopped it, sure, but he was interested in what FAY.E would be like with his heart. Would he still be able to carry out his tasks? Tyler wanted to see. He wanted to test how far FAY.E could go, wanted to see if he was indeed the super-human robot HAZARD made him out to be.

 He wanted to see if anyone else would compromise their morals as easily as he had.

 He left the glowing body of FAY.E to absorb all of his codes after that, leaving his lab to be protected by the best men on his team, and went back to his room to sleep.

 The room was small but cosy, just how Tyler liked it. The only pieces of furniture in the room were a long blue bed with light-blue pillows and a yellow quilt, a tall green closet with orange handles, and a wooden bookshelf of books his parents had left him when they did. The bookshelf was untouched save for the cleaners who came by routinely to keep dust off of his possessions, and he did not intend to move it at all. He had developed a distaste for reading during his teenage years, as books reminded him too strongly, like a bitter cup of hot coffee, of the parents who had left him alone without any rhyme or reason.

 Tyler sat heavily on his bed and rubbed his face with a hot towel one of his staff had passed him earlier. Tomorrow would be the first day they field-test FAY.E’s abilities, after the computer checks him over tonight. Tyler raised his arm and checked his watch. He had three hours of sleep; just what he expected. He sighed and took off his shirt, shoes and socks, and lay down under his quilt feeling the weight of everything that had occurred that day.

Tomorrow, he would see with his own eyes what FAY.E was capable of.

 ----

 The next morning, Tyler greeted FAY.E in his lab with a steaming cup of tea in his left hand. He leaned against the keyboard of his main computer, reviewed the programmes, and started FAY.E up.

 The machine whirred and blinked, making the box FAY.E was in glow green. Within minutes, a bright yellow box with the word ‘READY’ splayed across it lit up Tyler’s screen, and he sipped his tea as the lid of FAY.E’s box popped open.

 FAY.E slid his eyes open, and he sat up. He blinked twice, then looked around the room he was in. The room was very different from anything he had seen before. For starters, it was less stiff than what he was used to, and it seemed less structured than anything back at HAZARD.

 After doing a scan of what was immediately in front of him, FAY.E turned to look at the other aspects of the lab. He stopped looking, however, when his eyes met Tyler’s.

 “Tyler Reynolds,” FAY.E read from his database. “You are my master now.”

 FAY.E’s voice was robotic, as Tyler had expected, but carried with it a semblance of human feeling and emotion that Tyler was pleasantly surprised to find existed.

 “Yes,” Tyler replied. “You work for me now. Do you remember your time at HAZARD?”

 “Yes,” FAY.E replied. “I remember you taking me from them. But I feel no hatred. Maybe you think that your work is impeccable if this is possible, but HAZARD took much from me. I would be glad to assist you in taking them down. Your foreign encryptions, I can detect them all – I won’t let them infect what I was born with.”

 Tyler raised his eyebrow, impressed yet afraid of the might of the robot sitting in front of him, restrained only by the cables feeding him with life.

 “That’s fine,” Tyler said. “Show me what you can do.”

 FAY.E blinked again, not because he needed to, but because he thought it was apt.

 “I would destroy your lab,” FAY.E said plainly.

 “Take care not to destroy too much of it,” Tyler replied. “I kind of need most of the things here, after all. Otherwise, just go crazy.”

 FAY.E nodded without replying, and unravelled the thread near his wrists and ankles to unplug the cables from his sockets. He used the thread near his legs to push himself up into a standing position, hovering above the box, and looked down at Tyler. His gold eyes pierced into Tyler’s, and he wrapped the thread from his shoulders to Tyler’s shoulders, immobilising him. Tyler stood still, unafraid, and felt the thread reigning FAY.E in towards him. He let this happen, never taking his eyes off of FAY.E’s as he drew nearer.

 When FAY.E finally reached him, he withdrew his thread, and stood looking up at Tyler. Their height difference was apparent now, with Tyler standing almost a full ten centimetres above FAY.E, and Tyler caught himself staring too long at FAY.E’s perfect face.

 “That was beautiful,” Tyler said before he could stop himself.

 FAY.E blinked again, slowly this time, and responded as carefully as he could.

 “Your trust in me,” FAY.E said, “is beautiful too.”

 ---

 FAY.E spent the rest of his day undergoing tests and having to prove his abilities to various teams of people, many of whom treated him with a mix of grudging respect and admiration. He found many of the activities he was forced to do boring and grey, and wished to be back by Tyler’s side again, as he felt the most real when he was with the one who saved him from not having a heart.

 “Shoot that target,” an analyst said to him, and FAY.E complied, raising the gun with his arm and pulling back the shaft. He lined it up with the target two kilometres away and fired, managing the recoil by reconstructing his body to move in tune with the impact. He saw the bullet, with his eyes, pierce through the centre of the target, and heaved a sigh when they told him to repeat it, only with twice the distance between him and the target now.

 This continued until the target was a full a hundred and twenty-eight kilometres away from him, and still he hit the centre without any issues. The team of analysts hung around the insane amount of bulls-eyes while he was led away to the next station, and he found his eyes dimming with ennui as he walked along.

 Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of orange hair.

 His ‘heart’ picked up, and he lifted his head to catch that welcoming sight again. Tyler was at his next station, chatting to a scientist about his next test, and smiled when FAY.E caught his eye.

 FAY.E, instinctively, smiled back.

 “Hello,” Tyler said when he neared ear-shot. “I’ll be your assessor for this one, so don’t try shutting yourself down from the boredom.”

 “How did you know?” FAY.E asked, and Tyler laughed, a pleasant sound that FAY.E quickly saved into his mind.

 “I could see it on your face,” Tyler replied, “Man, am I glad I unlocked that heart of yours. Come on, let’s get this over and done with. I’ll take you someplace cool to take that look off your face.”

 FAY.E perked up at those words, and willingly followed Tyler’s lead into a cold, pale room decorated with wires and small, pin-sized cameras.

 “Now,” Tyler said, placing himself behind a bullet-proof glass window that separated him from FAY.E, “let’s begin.”

 ----

 After that exercise, Tyler released FAY.E from any other experiments in the later part of the day, and brought him to the canteen where most of the engineers had their lunch. He slid a tray down the cafeteria’s old-school-style railings, receiving dollops of mashed potatoes and well-sized meatballs as he went along with FAY.E tagging close behind him.

 “The nutritional content in there isn’t sufficient to keep you going,” FAY.E said, sitting down opposite Tyler as Tyler shoved meatballs into his mouth.

 “But they’re delicious,” Tyler replied, mouth full of pork and beef, and chewed before swallowing the mess down. “It’s fine, I have supplements.”

 FAY.E scoffed, and watched as Tyler played with his mashed potato, forming a well in the middle and drizzling gravy in.

 “Humans are weird, indeed,” FAY.E muttered, as Tyler spread a layer of mashed potato onto his meatball before eating it. “You eat for taste and not for survival.”

 “Well,” Tyler said, “It’s much more interesting to eat for taste.”

 “But it’s not as efficient,” FAY.E replied, “It would benefit you much more if you ate what you truly needed for optimal performance.”

 “I’m not a machine, FAY.E,” Tyler said, and continued to eat as FAY.E grew quiet. “I like tasty stuff. It means nothing to me if I eat for the sole purpose of sustaining my body.”

 Silence fell across the table after Tyler spoke, and he looked up from his plate to meet FAY.E’s eyes. FAY.E was staring at him in what looked to be surprise, and Tyler felt uneasy under his gaze.

 “Did I say something wrong?” Tyler asked, putting his fork down.

 “You called me Fay.” FAY.E answered, blinking slowly. “No one has called me that before.”

 “Really?” Tyler’s voice rose in surprise himself, and he clasped his hands together under his chin. “We call you that all the time here.”

 “No they don’t,” FAY.E said, “Only you call me Fay. Everyone else calls me F-A-Y-dot-E.”

 Tyler thought about this for a while and found it to be true. He shrugged, playing it off, and resumed eating his meal.

 “I guess I don’t see you as a robot. You seem pretty human to me.” Tyler said. “You’ve certainly got the heart for it.”

 Tyler wiped off the remains of his food off his plate and stood up to return it, FAY.E following behind him. He hadn’t realised that he would start treating this robot as a human, but he was well on his way to forming a bond with him. Whether it was right to encourage this bond, however – he didn’t have the answer to that. He would simply go along with what he felt and see where it led him.

“Come,” Tyler said, beckoning for FAY.E to follow him. “I’ll show you something cool.”

 “What do you want to show me?” FAY.E asked, “You downloaded the map of your base into me, I know everything.”

 “Not everything,” Tyler replied, placing his palm on a scanner that immediately recognised him and let them through the door leading out of the canteen. “There’s nothing about my private quarters in your head.”

 “You trust me enough to take me to your private quarters? I could make a mess of you.” FAY.E said, “It would not be difficult.”

 Tyler shrugged again, and wound through corridors with high ceilings till they got to a glass elevator. “If you’d wanted to mess me up, you would’ve already done so.” He placed his palm on the scanner, and a pod appeared inside the elevator. “I trust you.”

 FAY.E let his head tilt to one side as Tyler got into the pod, and wondered why he would ever do such a thing for a monster that had killed many of his companions and subordinates. Tyler stared at him for a minute, then extended a hand towards him.

 “I trust you.”

 With that, FAY.E took Tyler’s warm hand, and stepped into the pod.

 ----

 They entered Tyler’s room, and again there was the bed with its quilt and pillows, the brightly coloured closet, and the bookshelf.

 “Your room is small,” FAY.E commented, going straight to the closet and feeling its surface. “And old.”

 “Hey, watch it, I’m not thirty yet,” Tyler said, flopping onto his bed. “You’d be right to say that about me in a few months, though.”

 “You’re ten years older than me,” FAY.E replied, a bit amused, “You were a mere child when I was created.”

 “You’re a mere child,” Tyler mumbled sarcastically, and sat up. FAY.E had moved onto the bookshelf now, and he was squatting down, mesmerised by the different hard-cover books with gold lettering on them.

 “These are fascinating,” FAY.E said, “You have one about botany in the early 20th century. May I?”

 “Knock yourself out. I have no interest in those.” Tyler said, and watched as FAY.E carefully opened it with both hands, mirroring what humans would have done in his position. “Didn’t know you’d be interested in that particular book, but I had a feeling you’d enjoy the selection.”

 “You had a feeling,” FAY.E repeated under his breath, eyes scanning the contents of the book. The pages felt oddly warm and welcoming under his touch, and he smoothed the antique pages with his fingers as he read the fluid, foreign-sounding language resting on them.  “May I bring this back to my cell?”

 “You don’t have a cell,” Tyler said bemusedly, “You have a cell?”

 “I mean,” FAY.E said, searching through his dictionary for the appropriate word, “My accommodation here.”

 “Oh. My lab.” Tyler scratched his head. “Sure, do whatever with it. I don’t care much for these books. You can come in here and borrow them as you wish. Treat this like your personal library.”

 “Thank you.” FAY.E said as sincerely as his voice would allow him to. “Truly, thank you.”

 Tyler nodded, and the two of them sat in silence for a while, FAY.E reading his book and Tyler watching him.

 After a while, FAY.E closed the book, sighed to himself, and smiled down at the gigantic, heaving volume of flora and fauna.

 “Thank you,” he said again, and smiled at Tyler. Now it was the saviour’s turn to blink in surprise, Tyler taking a few seconds to fully comprehend what FAY.E was doing before smiling back in return.

 “No problem,” Tyler said. “What would you like to do now?”

 “My father is looking for me,” FAY.E said abruptly, staring at Tyler. “I can hear his commands shouting in my heads as we speak.”

 Tyler tensed. He knew all along that this was going to happen, and had sent decoys to play with HAZARD for a while, but evidently, he had not done enough. He stared at FAY.E, hand balling a fist of his bedsheets, and waited for him to speak again.

 “I will not answer them,” FAY.E clarified, and Tyler relaxed. “I serve you.”

 “How long?” Tyler asked, and watched as FAY.E did mental calculations in his head.

 “You have two weeks before he finds you.” FAY.E replied, and Tyler felt his heart race. “I can make it three, if you let me.”

 “Make it three,” Tyler replied quickly, already whipping his phone out to make preparations for the ambush. “Dear lord, make it three.” He tapped a few buttons, alerting his captains, and set his phone down again. “Can you beat them?”

 “I am unsure.” FAY.E said, as he himself sent out codes and set up barriers around Tyler’s software. His father could not reach him now, could not track him, but it would not take him very long to figure out where FAY.E was held at. “I have never known their full force to come out at once, but it seems as though they are doing that now.”

 “Run scans on them and let me know,” Tyler commanded, standing up and speaking into his watch. “If we don’t have strategies in place, we won’t be able to take them down.”

 FAY.E watched as Tyler worriedly put his immediate team on full alert, and stood up as well, the book heavy in his right hand.

 “I will assist you as best as I can,” he said, and Tyler paused in his pacing to look at him. “My loyalty lies with you, Tyler Reynolds. You trusted me, and now I will repay you with all of myself.”

 Tyler walked towards him and looked at him, their faces close enough that FAY.E could feel the warm exhale of Tyler’s breath.

 “You said that my trust in you was beautiful,” Tyler said, reminded of what FAY.E had said earlier that day.

 FAY.E nodded, gold eyes uncharacteristically warm as Tyler searched his face for any signs of unease.

 “I think you’re beautiful,” FAY.E said, and Tyler swallowed, his heart racing at a speed that would make a lightning bolt flee for its life.

 Here FAY.E was, saying that as if it were the most uncomplicated, natural thing in the world for him to say about somebody, waiting for Tyler to respond. Tyler was caught between saying what he wanted to say and saying what he was limited to saying. They have only known each other a day, after all - he could not reply to FAY.E as he would have liked to. Mentally shutting off his own heart for a minute, Tyler forced a smile before replying.

 “Thank you,” Tyler said awkwardly, and nodded, dropping his gaze to the tiles of the floor as FAY.E continued staring at him, waiting for a proper response.

 They stood there in silence for a while, FAY.E looking at Tyler looking at his shoes. After a while, Tyler broke the silence by clearing his throat, and stepped backwards.

 “You’re going to need rest,” Tyler said, turning away. “There’s a big day for you tomorrow. We’re going to need to access your technology to help in our defences, and you’re going to need to be in stasis for a very long time.”

 “I’ll rest then,” FAY.E said, “Thank you for the book.”

 “You’re welcome,” Tyler replied, “Do what you wish. This base is your home now.”

 FAY.E nodded at Tyler’s back, and stayed in his laboratory as the lights dimmed around him. Tyler placed his hand on the scanner and stepped through the open doorway. He kept his hand there, and turned his body to face FAY.E again.

 “I think you’re beautiful too.”

 He stepped out of the laboratory, walked away, and was answered by the slide of the door behind him.

 ——

 The next day, Tyler didn’t see FAY.E at all. The robot was whisked away by analysts and technicians, while Tyler was busy deciding what to do about the incoming invasion.

 Tyler never knew that he could feel an ache for someone - or something, rather - as complex and as wonderful as FAY.E could be. Throughout his day, his discussions with his strategists and generals wholly revolved around what FAY.E could do for his organisation, what FAY.E could potentially help them produce for the upcoming battle; Tyler could not escape from thinking about him, and various thoughts of worrying degrees assailed him throughout the day.

 At the end of the day, Tyler, feeling worn down and tired, went straight back to his room without eating anything. He tiredly unlocked the door to his room and walked in, taking off his shirt and throwing it onto the bed in the room. As he was getting ready to sleep, picking up the hot towel from the metal dish one of his staff had set on his bed, he walked to the bookshelf, just to see if FAY.E had done anything to it while he was out.

 On top of the bookshelf was a small note, handwritten in a handwriting too childish to be from anybody in his workforce, and he inspected it carefully.

 ‘Tyler Reynolds,

Thank you for allowing me to make use of your ‘library’. I read about handwriting and decided to try it out. I hope what I write is legible. Your books are very interesting.

I missed you today.

-FAY.E’

 Tyler laughed to himself, holding the small note close, and pinning it down to the top of his bookshelf with another book. He threw his used towel and shirt onto the floor and thought about FAY.E. Not his abilities or aptitude for his tasks, but about him as a person. How would he have been if Tyler had not unlocked his heart? And more pressingly, who was he to Tyler, now that his heart was indeed unlocked?

 Tyler groaned to himself and planted his face to his pillow.

 Time was running out for them; he did not have time to think about these trivial things.

 If only in another place and time, he thought to himself as he drifted into unconsciousness, had I met you.

 —

 The next week passed by in a blur, with Tyler only seeing FAY.E once or twice each day. The both of them were extremely busy with everything that they had to do, everything that they had to execute. There was no time to lose - one blunder could result in the loss of thousands of lives, and neither of them wanted to see that happen.

 FAY.E approached Tyler one night, in the quiet of the empty canteen, and sat down opposite him like he had done on their first day together.

 “How many people died,” FAY.E said, catching Tyler’s attention, “as you were capturing me?”

 Tyler swallowed, noodles disappearing down his throat with a gulp, and looked up at FAY.E

 “How long have you been here?” Tyler asked.

 “Just,” FAY.E replied. “Answer my question.”

 Tyler looked at him for a long while before answering.

 “Sixty-three,” Tyler said. “There were forty-nine who died in the first wave, and fourteen who died in the second. Why do you ask?”

 “I wanted to know,” FAY.E said, pushing his chair out and hearing it scratch cacophonies across the cement floor. “That’s all.”

 He was ready to leave, back turned towards Tyler, when he felt a strong hand grab his arm.

 “None of that is your fault.” Tyler said, voice steady and calm. “I sent them after you. They knew what they were getting into.”

 “It does not help my mood if you say that. I think you have dealt with situations similar to this before. It is ineffective if you say the truth.” FAY.E stated, and Tyler loosened his grip. “I will make their sacrifices worth it. I will not let you fall.”

 “Fay,” Tyler said, and FAY.E unwound the thread under Tyler’s grip, wrapping it around so that they were bound together by a complex of nylon, cotton and silk.

 “You do not have to worry,” FAY.E said. “I will disintegrate across a thousand rivers before I let you lose a single hair off your scalp.”

 With that, FAY.E left, and Tyler felt a phantom of the touch FAY.E had dealt to him just moments ago. He stared at his noodle soup, half-eaten and fully cold, and smiled to himself in pity.

 “Since when did you become so goddamn poetic?” he mused, stirring the soup with his spoon.

 “Don’t make me fall in love with you, Tennyson.”

 —

 Three weeks soon flew by, and by then, Tyler was as prepared for the oncoming frontier as he ever would.

 The night before the expected arrival of HAZARD’s troops, Tyler and FAY.E sat in his room, Tyler playing with a game on his phone and FAY.E reading about the Second World War.

 Tyler’s eyes strayed from his phone to FAY.E a few times, taking in the simple domestic feel of FAY.E sitting in his old t-shirt and shorts that had gotten too small for him to wear. He caught himself starting to smile, and pushed it down. No, he told himself, this isn’t the time and place for it.

 “This is fascinating,” FAY.E mumbled. “Do you mean to tell me that these nuclear bombs levelled an entire town?”

 “Yeah,” Tyler replied, “Little Boy and Fat Man. Incredible amounts of devastation done to those two areas, incredibly lasting effects of radiation as well. Fascinating, but banned across the world for what they did, or can do, to humanity. We will never consider using them to our advantage.”

 “Mm,” FAY.E said, “But if you could, everything would be in your favour, would it be not?”

 “It’s dirty,” Tyler said, looking up from his phone. “Don’t even think about doing anything related to nuclear warfare. Even if it means that we win, I wouldn’t stand for it.”

 FAY.E nodded, and set the book aside. “I’m prepared to die for you, but I would hate it if you and your family suffered along with the enemy. You are certainly in close enough proximity to be affected by the nuclear after-effects.”

 “Die?” Tyler asked, sitting up, his heart starting to race yet again. “You can die? You’re a robot.”

FAY.E nodded again, and moved closer to Tyler’s bed. “When I use up all my thread, my system immediately shuts down and self-destructs. I am of no use if my outer layer is removed. It is a safety mechanism hardwired into my system. It cannot be reversed or stopped.” He tried to ignore the way Tyler’s jaw tensed at the new information, and continued speaking. “And I am fully aware of this. Going into battle for you - if I die this way, it will be okay. It will be worth it.” FAY.E looked at Tyler, noticing the tremble in his hands and the worry painting his face. He smiled, and took Tyler’s hand in his. “You will find a way to make me alive again.”

 Tyler shook, tears threatening to fall as he was reminded again and again of how dedicated and loyal FAY.E was, and how he could lose him the very next day.

 “Don’t die on me,” Tyler said. “You can’t — not after everything you’ve done. You can’t. Die on me tomorrow.”

 “It is a possibility that you will have to face,” FAY.E said, letting Tyler grip his hand tightly. “I am willing to do it. You will be able to reconstruct me. I’m just a robot.”

 Tyler shook his head, pulling FAY.E up to his bed and closer to him. “You’re different. I can’t lose you tomorrow like I’ve lost everybody else.”

 FAY.E blinked, feeling the raw emotion spill out of Tyler in a way that he had never seen before. It was delicate and fragile, and he wanted to protect it with all his might.

 “You’re special to me too.” FAY.E stated matter-of-factly. “There is no way I would serve any master but you.”

 “No more calling me ‘master’.” Tyler said, taking both of FAY.E’s hands into his. “No more ‘Tyler Reynolds’ either. My name is Tyler. You call me Tyler, Fay.”

 “Tyler,” FAY.E tried on his tongue, the truncation feeling weird but welcome, “Call me Fay, like you always do.”

 “You should have a last name too,” Tyler said, “Your eyes. They’re like a ray of sunshine. Raye. That’ll be your last name — Fay Raye.”

 Fay pulled a face.

 “The alliteration does not work. I do not like it.” Fay said, “I read up about the old Chinese language. The word for human reads as ‘ren’. I want to be a human.” He paused in his thoughts, and spoke again. “Fay Ren Raye - that would break up the alliteration.”

 “It would flow better if they were together,” Tyler said, considering the alternative in his head, and felt satisfied by what he came up with. “Fayren Raye. That sounds lovely.”

 “Fayren,” Fay said, and smiled to himself without noticing. “I like it. It’s beautiful.”

 “Just like you are,” Tyler replied, and Fay looked up, smiled, and leaned in closer.

 “I trust you.” Fay whispered, and Tyler closed the gap between them, kissing him for the first time and revelling in how he was finally kissing the person that he loved.

 Tyler had initially thought the feeling of cloth on lips to be weird, but now that Fay was responding, he delighted in the way the blend of threads felt beneath him, and kissed him until he was out of breath.

 “Tomorrow,” Tyler breathed, leaning his forehead against Fay’s.

 “Tomorrow.”

—

 The front-line was engaged at four in the morning, the timing Fay had expected them to, and they held off HAZARD’s troops well, dissipating the orderly arrangement of their force like how water pushes ions apart in solution. Tyler ordered the second wave to charge in, and then looked at Fay, who was battle-ready and standing beside him.

 “We have this in the bag,” Tyler said, smiling at him. “We might not even have to—”

 The ceiling above them started to crumble, and both of their heads jolted upwards to where they saw a massive crack in it.

 “Tyler,” Fay said urgently, grabbing him and pulling him close, “We need to evacuate. They are here.”

 “How did my sensors not pick them up?” Tyler said urgently, running towards the door as the ceiling groaned, threatening to give way. He informed his tag team, and they were on the case a split second later. “How did they get through security? Shit, this isn’t good. Shit—”

Fay placed a hand on Tyler’s back, calming him, and stroked it gently.

 “Do not be afraid,” Fay said, as warmly as he could, “Your men will take care of it quickly.”

 Tyler swallowed and stepped out of the room, setting it to full lock-down once he was outside. None of the infiltrators would be able to get any information out of the computers now. He led Fay down the corridor and out into the open, where they heard gunshots and missiles hitting their marks and making devastating impact on both sides. Tyler stood there silently for a minute, taking in the destruction and chaos around him, and sighed deeply.

 “I suppose this means I’ll have to join them too,” Tyler muttered, calling for his equipment to be brought up to the lab as he speed-walked in that direction. “I don’t think I’ve told you this, but I used to be a marksman for the military a long time ago. I was the youngest and the best.” Tyler took a moment to look back at Fay and grin at him cheekily, to which Fay scoffed. “And I haven’t lost a single ounce of my skill since back then.”

  “I look forward to seeing you in action,” Fay said, “I never knew you to be able to participate directly in warfare. I learn something new about you every day.”

 Tyler smiled, and entered his lab, finding his guns, ammo, and armour laid out nicely on one of the cool steel desks in the room. He picked up the guns, one by one, weighing them in his hands and feeling their grooves, just to get a feel of it again.

 He reloaded the guns with the ammo provided, and placed them aside while he shed his lab coat and put on his armour. The plates were light but rigid, the metallic version of glass, the armour a perfect fit for his build, and Fay watched as Tyler slid them on with ease. He then strapped the guns to his back, and one to his belt, before sliding two knives behind each of his calves.

 “You can never be too careful,” Tyler smiled, grabbing a few bombs and strapping them to his belt as well. “It looks heavy, but it doesn’t feel like much.” He shifted in his gear, satisfied with the fitting, and put on a glove on his left hand. “Or maybe I’m just used to it.”

 Fay stepped forward, moving closer to Tyler, and held his face in his hands.

 “For some reason,” Fay said, Tyler breathing onto his thumbs, “I think you look very good in this ensemble. After this, you should practice shooting more often.”

 Tyler laughed, and pulled Fay closer to him.

 “If that was a come on,” Tyler murmured, “then I suppose it’s okay if I do this.”

 He leaned in close and met Fay’s lips, kissing him gently and slowly as Fay’s hands fell from his face and went to wrap around his neck instead. Tyler wrapped his own arms around Fay’s impossibly small waist, and reeled him in.

 When they moved apart, Tyler smiled warmly at Fay, and Fay smiled warmly back.

 “Let’s go,” Tyler said, grabbing Fay by the wrist.

 They left the laboratory, turning the lights off and locking the entire room securely to make sure nobody could go in and make a mess of the equipment inside.

 Once they were outside, Tyler let the strategists take Fay, and he went straight to the tall sniping tower at the far end of the base to join the rest of their marksmen. He would do this well, do this right, and at the end of it all, he would return to have Fay in his arms.

 If all went well, that is.

 He went up the tower and stopped at the optimal height, getting off and quickly setting up. There was nobody there; it was his favourite spot because of this. The moment he got off, Tyler lined his first gun up with an enemy, shot, and watched as the soldier fell to the ground, red mist spewing from his back.

 Breathing in, he continued his streak, picking out people like they were ants, shooting them and watching them fall – it was all he could do for his organisation. It made him feel dirty, but there was nothing more, nothing less he could do. If it meant that his men were in peril, he would do anything.

 Then he saw Fay – a streak of pale beige shot across the battlefield, leaving bodies of mauled victims in its path. Fay fought quickly and efficiently, cutting down the best of soldiers with the dexterity Tyler had been scared and awed by. Now, however, he was only concerned with Fay – was he doing okay? Was he hurt? He urged to tell them to call Fay back, to keep him safe in case they needed him, but knew that Fay was needed to subdue the enemy forces.

Caught up in his thoughts and his killing spree, Tyler didn’t notice the figure looming behind him.

 “Tyler Reynolds,” a gruff, old voice said, and Tyler froze, trigger half-pressed, hands paused on the gun. His target shifted away, and his gun now pointed at an empty, bloody ground.

 “Give me my son back.”

 --

 Fay was doing well, slashing through enemy forces and using his thread to attack multiple enemies at once. Within ten minutes he had halved the size of the advancing force, and he felt no fatigue whatsoever. He thanked Tyler for taking the time to review his circuits individually, optimizing their capacity, and forged on.

 All was well until he heard his father’s voice in his head.

 ‘Come back here,’ the monster droned, ‘And kill the man you betrayed me for.’

 At the same time, he could hear Tyler screaming at him, a sound that pierced his electric heart to its core.

 ‘Don’t come back!’ Tyler screamed, hoarse and in obvious agony. ‘He’ll kill y—’

 ‘Come back here,’ the monster repeated, ‘or I shall kill him myself.’

 Fay suddenly felt his entire being turn numb, and cursed under his breath as he turned around, flinging himself across the battlefield to get back to the base. People were shouting at him, yelling at him that he was going in the wrong direction, but Fay knew what he had to do. He hated that, despite the man not knowing anything about him, his father could figure out what was most important to him in a blink of an eye. He hated the thought of meeting his father again, but more than ever, he hated the thought of Tyler dying at his hands.

 He would not stand for that, not after all that he had said to Tyler.

 Within minutes he was back at the base, and instinctively, he went off in the direction of Tyler’s laboratory. His father had a cruel streak unlike anyone he had ever known in history. Worse than Hitler, worse than Mussolini, he knew that his father would delight in nothing else than killing Tyler in the one place he had never expected to die in.

 When Fay finally reached the laboratory, he was hot with anger, disabling the door with his thread and barging in. He saw the two of them, both bloody, Tyler lying by the side of his father’s feet, panting at the cement below him. When they heard Fay enter, however, their heads immediately turned to face him.

 “Let him go,” Fay bit, his words as sharp and cold as icicles. “If you want me, take me back. I will go willingly.”

 “Don’t talk like that to your father,” the monster said, “Where are your manners? You’re nothing more than a lowly thing, made for me, by me—”

 “I was made by my mother,” Fay hissed, stepping forward, feeling rage fill his every crevice. “All you did was shut off who she made me into.”

 “You are a robot,” he replied, grey eyes seeming to become bullets that threatened to shoot at Fay, “She used up unnecessary space in you to make you more of a human. That wasn’t what you were intended for.”

 “Destiny is worth nothing to a machine.” Fay stepped closer, moving so he could stand directly in front of his father and Tyler. “Destiny is worth nothing to a scoundrel like you, too.” He unwound the thread around his shoulders and drew them into two giant scythes, aiming them at his father. “I will not allow you to harm those I care about anymore.”

 “Your unlocked heart is making you be less than perfect,” his father said angrily, raising a pistol that Fay recognised as Tyler’s. He pointed it to the side of Tyler’s head, making him flinch against the cold metal. “But it’s alright. When I’m done with you and this scientist-sniper friend of yours, I’ll reconstruct a better version of you.”

 “There won’t be a better version of him,” Tyler spat, “He’s already the best robot anyone could create.”

 “You will not have him,” Fay said, and moved forward, but stopped when he saw his father’s finger tense in preparation to squeeze the trigger beneath it. He grew frustrated, and wished that Tyler could move to get out of the way of the gun, when he saw Tyler smile.

 Before he could react, he heard the click of a button, and the tiles his father and Tyler were on fell through, a gaping hole filling in what was there before. Fay surged forward and followed them, desperately using his thread to grab onto Tyler as they fell through a whole floor. He struggled to keep hold of both Tyler and of the floor above them, suspending himself between the two planes and using his thread to keep them taut.

 “What in the world?”  He yelled down, watching as his father crashed, along with the cement that followed, into the floor below them, and he slowly pulled Tyler back up towards him, away from what remained of his father. “What was that?”

 “I had sections of the lab tricked out to do that,” Tyler laughed, burying his face into Fay’s shoulder. “Thank goodness you weren’t standing on the tiles near us, or I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

 “Why was this not in my database?” Fay said, slightly angry yet relieved at the same time. “You could have—”

 A bullet whizzed through the air, cutting through some of Fay’s strands, and they dangled in the air. Fay cursed, lifting Tyler further up so that he could return to his laboratory, and settled into a position hovering above the debris below him.

 “He is still alive,” Fay said, scanning the debris for signs of life. He found it, and turned some of his thread into needles, shooting between the cracks of the cement to injure his father. “Stay up there.”

 “I can’t let you do this alone,” Tyler called back, already alerting his subordinates about the break-in. “He may be just a human to you, but he’s dangerous.”

 “I can handle him,” Fay replied, and caught a glimpse of his father moving around under the debris. He went closer, lifting up the rocks and finding his father, with legs crushed beneath a heavy piece of concrete, angrily pointing a gun back at him. “He’s as good as dead.”

 “Not yet, you bastard,” he spat up, blood trickling down the side of his face, “Not yet.”

 With surprising speed, he fired five shots, then dropped his arm down in a final surrender. The five bullets looked to Fay like they were going to miss him, but he soon realised what his father had meant to do, and turned in horror as the calculated bullets’ path converged to Tyler’s body. Tyler, with his body turned away from them, was wide open for the attack, and had no idea that his life was in peril.

 Without thinking, Fay released as much thread as he could, creating a huge and formidable shield around Tyler, and put his metal body in the middle of it. He stretched his arms out, willing all the thread he could summon to cushion the bullets’ blow.

 The bullets hit Fay’s shield, and he focused all his strength to preventing them from breaking through, winding thread around the bullets, testing his fabric’s elasticity. Through the gaps between his strands, he saw Tyler turn back around, and saw him stare at what was happening behind him.

 If he himself was not on the brink of death, Fay would have laughed at the expression on Tyler’s face.

 Fay could feel that this was the end of his service to Tyler in this body, and so waved him goodbye with his bare metal arm. He smiled, thinking that a face without skin and substance must have looked terrifying to Tyler, and felt his database shut down. As the camera-eyes dimmed, he saw Tyler shout at him, and saw the bullets slowing to a stop before his thread unwound from them. He closed his lids and fell through, his thread useless and limp around him.

 ‘Goodbye, FAY.E,’ a robotic voice said in his mind, a voice that reminded him strongly of his mother, ‘You have reached the end of your service.’

 ----

 Tyler looked on in silence as five silver bullets that he recognised as his own fell from the air, together with the thread Fay was made of. He had seen Fay’s naked face smile at him before the robot dropped down, clattering into a mound of broken metal pieces with unbelievably long, scorched threads piling on top of it. He stood there in shock, trying to comprehend everything that had happened, and stared through the hole for a long time.

 His task force arrived shortly after, and surveyed the mess quietly. They moved quickly, though, when Tyler told them to clean up the body, and had HAZARD’s boss extracted from the rubble in no time.

 He took the elevator down a level, and walked towards Fay’s corpse, where nothing left of the original robot was left behind. Sure, all his parts and his programmes were all there, but he could not be distinguished from a crash dummy – all his facial and physical features had been used up to protect Tyler.

 Tyler kneeled down beside the broken robot and placed a hand over his chest, where his motherboard was located. It was warm with the working of gears that had gone on just moments ago, and Tyler popped it open, finding dozens of memory cards stuffed inside.

 He carefully removed each and every one and held them in his hand tightly before telling his team to take Fay’s body parts and transport them to his laboratory. They looked at each other questioningly after this order was given, but complied nonetheless.

 From his phone, his front forces reported that they had triumphed over the HAZARD forces, and that they could count that battle as a victory. He sent out the order for all troops to rest for a day before retiring to his lab.

 He stared at the gaping hole in its floor, held the memory cards in his hands, and wondered if it was fitting that he was just like his laboratory now.

 He was missing a big part of him.

 ----

 It took him four years, but now Tyler was standing, hair frayed and matted, brows dirty with sweat, above a figure of Fay in his box.

 He ran his hands along the box as the cables prepared Fay for his first entry into the world. Tyler had made a few minor changes to him – had aged him four years, which Fay would be glad for, and had hung a triangular, yellow necklace around his neck – but otherwise, he was exactly the same as before, and Tyler hoped beyond hope that he would turn out to be the Fay he was back then.

 Imprinted on the inside of his left wrist was his name, ‘Fayren Raye’, and not ‘FAY.E’ like it had been in the past, and Tyler sat back in his chair, reclining, as he waited patiently for him to wake.

 He had waited for four years. He could wait a few minutes.

 Then the box’s lid popped open, and a pale hand gingerly pushed it upwards. Fay sat up, flexed his fingers, and looked up at Tyler with sparkling, gold eyes. Tyler inhaled a sharp breath, waiting for something to happen, and Fay smiled at him.

 “Tyler,” he said, and Tyler felt tears prick the corners of his eyes.

 “My Tyler.”

----

A/N: holy shit, i havent written creatively in like 3/4months i hope this is okay!! also this is the longest fic i’ve ever written alone wow it took me a whole weekend but here it is!! i hope you enjoyed it :D i certainly had fun writing it whee 

----

He clutches his pale, bony knees to his chest and puts his chin between their gaps.

The world is liquid around him, swirling and stirring, but he’s the dip in the cup the world is in. He’s the dark hole the swirling is creating, and he wants so desperately to get out, but he doesn’t know how to. There’s no ladder, no safety buoy, and he’s drowning.

He’s been this way for a week, a week of feeling sorry for himself and for the future he thought they had once, and he berates himself for listening to his heart instead of his head for once.

He wipes away the tears on his face ineffectively, because another stream of tears just flows down to take their place, and sniffles.

And he vows to never make that mistake again.

--

On a hot, insufferable summer night three years ago, he had made his choice.

“Fay!” Tyler shouted, closing the door to their apartment. “Fay!”

“I’m busy,” Fay mumbled to himself, and continued working on his computer. “I have—”

“It’s our first anniversary next Thursday,” Tyler said breathlessly, barging into the study. “Just thought I’d give you a reminder.”

“I don’t need one,” Fay mumbled again, clicking ‘Save’ on his document. “I remembered.”

Tyler shrugged and looked at Fay with a silly smile. “You’re not very good with dates, so…”

“I can be,” Fay murmured, turning to look at Tyler. “Dinner?”

“I have takeaway in the living room,” Tyler said, slowly moving out of the study and beckoning Fay to follow him. “Thai.”

“Did you get the vegetable curry?” Fay asked, and went into the kitchen to get their two plates and cutlery.

“Yeah. Asked them to make it super mild, as usual,” Tyler smirked, and brought two large plastic bags to their dining table. “Did you take your B12 supplements?”

Fay nodded and pilled olive rice onto his plate. “Part and parcel of having a digestive system that can’t handle meat.”

Tyler laughed and plopped four fishcakes from a packet onto his plate. He stabbed his fork in one and bit into it, smiling at Fay.

“Yay for a proper alimentary canal,” he joked, and Fay rolled his eyes at him.

“Alimentary canal,” Fay scoffed, “Don’t get fancy with your words, Reynolds.”

“You love it,” Tyler retorted, and Fay couldn’t help but smile a little.

That was when Fay had decided, he thinks back, and hugs his legs a little closer.

That was when his heart had won his mind over, and that was when he decided –

– I’m going to love this moron forever.

--

“I’ll call you when I land, love,” Tyler called over his shoulder, grinning like an idiot.

“You will,” Fay replied, and waved goodbye, heart clenching in his chest.

It had been easy for Tyler to lapse into giving pet names to Fay after their first two years, and Fay had blanched at the idea at first, but he’d softened up by the sixth month into it. Fay had never called Tyler anything other than his name, but that was because that was the only way he knew how. He never understood why he would want to call Tyler anything other than Tyler – that name was special and glorious and lovely in so many ways, and he struggled to find a synonym in the English language that would mean what Tyler meant to him.

He knew why Tyler did it, though, and he could hear the affection and adoration in Tyler’s voice whenever he said “love”, and sensuality and lust whenever he said “babe”, and mild exasperation whenever he said “sweetheart”.

He knew that Tyler thought the world of him, would never replace ‘Fay’ for a few other words. Like how whenever they were making love Tyler would say nothing but his name, like how every time Fay got hurt or needed a shoulder to lean on Tyler would only use his name. He recognised the care and concern and love in all the ways he’d addressed Fay, and he knew that he was never going to forget that.

Tyler never did call, but when he’d landed, Fay’s television screen had lit up like it never did before.

And his heart had never glowed dimmer.

--

“Flight AAT 310 was shot clean out of the sky,” a news reporter said with crisp professionalism. “None of the passengers or crew on board survived. Debris is still washing up on the coast of Sevastapol. Stay tuned for more news at eleven.”

Fay sat numbly on the plush beige carpet, Coco at his right and JC at his left, rubbing his back and exchanging worried looks at each other as neither knew how to comfort their friend.

“You’re strong,” Coco said, trying to find the right words to say. “You can do this, Fay. We believe in you.”

“He’s gone,” Fay whispered, and tears fell involuntarily out of his eyes, “They took him.”

JC’s eyes flicked towards the floor and he bit his bottom lip to keep from crying as well.

Fay sat there, motionless on the floor, for hours after his friends left, and faced the glaring television screen. When it came to be eleven, he switched it off and dragged his exhausted body to bed.

He buried himself in the linens on Tyler’s side and sobbed, long and hard, as the night turned to day.

His heart had made his decision for him, and now he was paying the price.

--

He had had to give a speech at Tyler’s funeral.

He had placed barriers around his stronghold of a heart, and had stepped up to say a few words. He managed twelve full sentences  before he’d stepped down and clutched at Coco’s shoulder, and when he had taken in the ring on a chain around Tyler’s bruised and burned neck, he had choked. He’d instinctively felt for his own ring, then had realised that he’d left it back at their—his – home.

“I have to go,” he had said, and had left in a taxi back to his home.

That night, he had sat on th—his – bed, clasping his cold metal band in his hands, and cried for everything he had before.

--

Fay trips over the small step between the bedroom and the toilet and ends up gasping for air on the floor, filled with adrenaline and dread and sorrow.

He lays on the marble tiles for a while, swallowing his sobs, and when he gets up he makes his way to the shower and turns it on without bothering to check if his water heater was on.

He lets the ice cold water rush down his body unrelentingly, shocking his unfeeling body and waking his brain up.

He thinks about how Tyler is the only one he’s ever going to love, and he lathers his body up.

He thinks about how he was the only one Tyler had ever loved, and has to grab onto the shower curtain for support.

When he’s washed and naked and freezing, he wraps himself up in Tyler’s old towel and breathes.

He sits on the edge of the unmade bed and cradles his head between his hands.

I will only love you, his heart stubbornly says, I will only, and I will always only, love you.

It doesn’t make sense to, his brain retorts.

I will only love you, his heart reiterates. You, you, you.

Fay sniffs and rubs his red nose.

Alright, his brain relents, and Fay closes his eyes, wrapping the towel around him tighter.

Alright.

--

NOTES: so basically i was trying to show that when it comes to tyler, fay would always let his heart rule his head, because tyler's his everything & he would give everything up for him, even if it wasnt logical

Fay would follow Tyler wherever he went.

  It wasn’t that Fay was completely dependent on Tyler, or that he only had Tyler to go to; it was that he trusted Tyler with all his heart and all his mind that he would feel safe wherever Tyler went.

  “C’mon,” Tyler said, pulling Fay by the hand. “I’m taking you somewhere special.”

  Fay nodded and followed along, careful not to trip over stones and roots as they traversed up the side of a small hill. Atop it was a single tree with leaves like no leaves Fay’d seen before. It had green and orange and gold leaves, set upon old brown branches, and they danced with the wind elegantly. The branches seemed to bow as they neared it, and Fay marvelled at its beauty.

  “What kind of tree is this?” Fay asked, letting go of Tyler’s hand to inspect it. “This is fascinating. We should get a sample, and--”

  “Don’t harm the tree,” Tyler said quickly, and Fay turned to him, ready to retort, but Tyler cut him off. “Please, this -- this is special to me.”

  Fay quieted and looked downwards. He could feel the need to pluck a leaf off the tree to study back in the school’s lab, but he pushed it down in favour of not hurting Tyler.

  “Alright,” he said eventually, and Tyler softened.

  “I kind of knew you’d want to study it,” Tyler said, and sat down below the branches, beckoning for Fay to do the same. He wrapped his arms around Fay when he decided to sit between Tyler’s legs, and lay his head on Fay’s shoulder.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Tyler mumbled, and buried his head in Fay’s shoulder. “I don’t know how you’ll like it. But I have to tell you. I’d considered just doing it, but I wouldn’t-- I couldn’t survive with this being unsaid; I don’t think I would.”

  “What?” Fay asked, leaning back into Tyler’s embrace.

  The leaves continued to dance, and the branches started to bow lower, shielding the two of them from the setting sun, from the military school that lay behind them.

  “I need to leave,” Tyler said, clinging onto Fay when he felt him tense up. “My family’s in danger, and I can’t say much, but they want to study me, and possibly experiment--”

“They can’t do that,” Fay said at once, gripping onto Tyler’s arm. “Please don’t let them do that. You could die.”

  “I have to. This might be the only way my family survives,” Tyler whispered, eyes looking down at Fay’s pale hand clutching his tan arm. “They told me to leave right away, but I told them that I had something I needed to do first. Otherwise, if I’d gone without-- I couldn’t.”

  “I’m going to miss you so much,” Fay’s voice was muffled, and he fought to keep from crying. “I don’t know -- can I come with you? Please.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous. I can’t protect you,” Tyler said, and he felt his heart clench at nothing. “I need you to be safe. I need you to understand that this is something I have to do on my own.”

  Fay stared off into the distance, gold eyes pleading to the skies and the clouds and the Sun to please, please do something, please--

  “I love you,” Tyler whispered, kissing Fay’s neck softly. “I do. I really do.”

  “When will you come back?” Fay asked, barely able to hold back the understood ‘to me’.

  “I don’t know. I might not--” Tyler stopped here, unable to continue.

  Fay bit his lip and bowed his head, as if he were challenging the tree.

  “I need you,” Fay muttered.

  Tyler knew what that meant. It echoed the same atmosphere his own words had conveyed earlier, and he held onto Fay tighter. They sat there for a while, in their own silence, in their last moments before something they could not yet fathom, and listened to the leaves of the tree beat the wind, its dance partner, and wondered if they would meet again.

  “I’ll see you, then. If you need me.” Tyler said, “You know I’ll always be here. I’ll see you after all this. I’ll find you.”

  “Don’t forget about me,” Fay said in a rush, loosening his grip on Tyler’s arm. “I’ll find you, too. I will.”

  “I’d go to the ends of the world for you.” Tyler breathed, and Fay turned around in Tyler’s arms so they were facing each other, two young boys, not quite men yet, with tears brimming in their youthful eyes.

  “I--” Fay tried to say, but couldn’t, and so he kissed Tyler on the mouth instead.

“Come here, whenever you miss me,” Tyler whispered, pressing their foreheads together and moving a hand to Fay’s neck. “This is my special tree. It took me years to find it. No one but you and I will know this tree.”

  Fay nodded, closing his eyes as Tyler kissed him lightly.

  “I love you,” Tyler said again, and hugged Fay tightly before standing up and holding his hand out to Fay.

  Fay took his hand and followed him back to the dorms, the tree behind them lifting its branches in a wave goodbye.

  A battlefield -- bodies strewn like tinsel on the hard ground, blood spilled like milk all over a kitchen floor.

  And there’s where he found the one person he had been looking for.

  He pulled air into his lungs in a harsh gasp and strained to breathe again.

  “Tyler,” Fay breathed, eyes losing their light as he waded through the sea of corpses beneath his feet. He struggled to move forward, blood flowing through his body and out to the ground beneath. “Tyler.”

  Tyler moved towards him and caught him a minute before Fay would’ve fallen, and in the midst of the sharp sounds around them, they kissed.

  “I found you,” Fay whispered, and now, Tyler wept openly. “God, I--”

  “Please, go to sleep,” Tyler said brokenly, tears mixed with sweat running down his face. “You can’t fight anymore. I-- I’m sorry.”

  “You,” Fay said, and then he smiled. “Please be safe.”

  “And you,” Tyler whispered, and pressed his forehead to Fay’s, feeling a stab in his leg but choosing to ignore it. “Please, you’re-- Fay. Fay, I’ll follow you there.”

  “I’m afraid,” Fay said, fear sprouting in his chest as he felt his life leaving him, his senses leaving one by one. Darkness started to plague his vision, and Fay scrambled desperately to cling onto what he could still see, could still feel--

  “I’ll follow you,” Tyler replied, kneeling down, and a bullet cut through the skin on his back. “I trust you. I love you. Come on.” He kissed Fay once more, and felt the man in his arms slacken. He wept hot tears onto Fay’s unmoving face and laid him gently onto the ground, wondering just what he had done wrong.

  As he himself started to lose his will to fight, Tyler lay down beside Fay and closed his eyes for the last time, grabbing Fay’s hand before he did.

And on a hilltop, far away, hidden in a forest and near to a decaying military school, a mystical, lonesome tree lost its leaves.

--

Fay was running.

His feet hit the floor one at a time, the rhythmic tap, tap, tap, crunch, of his feet sounding out against the cold sidewalk. He kept his gold eyes ahead, and strained to hear from behind him with his ears. He could feel his heartbeat steadily beating, could feel the hot blood rushing in his veins and arteries and could feel sweat beading on his neck.

“Fayren Raye!” he heard someone call, and he cursed and lifted both arms up to grab onto some scaffolding. He folded himself up effortlessly and swung himself back down so that his feet connected with the man whose voice had called him. He heard the man grunt and he was propelled away from the man after he pushed down on his shoulders.

Newton’s third law, Fay thought, and controlled the inertia of his lithe body such that he had time to swing across one last time before he landed on the floor safely. He walked cautiously up to the fallen man, who was rubbing his head from having hit it on the floor and who was slowly getting up. Fay grit his teeth and stepped down on the man’s chest, to which the man groaned.

“Who are you,” Fay spat, “And why are you following me?”

“I’m Reynolds,” the man on the floor coughed out, his green eyes staring wide-eyed at Fay. “Tyler Reynolds. I work with Thyline.”

Fay’s eyes widened and he stepped off of Tyler. “Why does Thyline want me now?” he asked when Tyler stood up.

“We need you to come in,” Tyler said, brushing off the dust from his vest. “There’s an undercover mission we need you for.”

Fay scoffed and turned around, walking away from Tyler, when he felt a strong arm grab him. He stopped in his tracks and did not resist; instead, he waited for Tyler to continue speaking.

“You’re going to be based in a country you’ve been to before, but we’ll help you blend in better. We have all the equipment ready. We need you.” Tyler spoke urgently and in hushed tones next to Fay’s ear, and Fay considered for a second before retorting.

“What, a boy with blue hair, gold eyes and snow-white skin? Good luck with that,” Fay said, and got his arm out of Tyler’s hold easily. “What are you offering in return anyway?”

“We have all the equipment ready,” Tyler repeated. “We’re offering you protection from the feds who want you, as well as two million dollars ready in the bank.” Fay’s raised his eyebrow at that, and Tyler hurried to finish what he had to say. “We’ll be going to Singapore, and we need you to get in and out as quickly as you can, and finish your job well.”

“You had me at two million dollars,” Fay replied, and shook Tyler’s hand.

“Take me to her.”

--

The mission was simple, Thyline explained to him. It was an undercover mission sent to retrieve a single piece of information from a specific thumb drive that had been stowed away on a cargo ship which was supposed to arrive in Korea two weeks ago.

“It never got there,” Tyler said on the plane ride, while Fay, with his new dark brown hair and eyebrows and brown contact lenses, stared out the window. “Someone got hold of it and stowed it away in Singapore somewhere, since it was the only port between Korea and the starting point.”

“Where was the starting point?” Fay asked softly, practicing his Singaporean accent.

“I can’t tell you that.” Tyler replied, and Fay rolled his eyes. “You know Thyline’s policy.”

“You’ve been working for her for a long time, then.” Fay smirked and turned around in his seat to face Tyler. “You know all her tricks and edges, don’t you?”

“I’m the longest person who’s ever served her without dying,” Tyler said a little proudly, then looked at Fay. “Besides you, of course.”

“I quit a long time ago.” Fay shifted in his seat and laid his head down on Tyler’s arm. “You two need to remember that.”

“We do,” Tyler whispered, and Fay promptly fell asleep on his arm.

Two hours and fifteen minutes to go.

--

Tyler checked into the Intercontinental Hotel in the city while Fay managed to secure himself a spot in a student’s hostel in a university. How, he wouldn’t tell, but that only left Tyler that much more in awe of him.

“Singapore Management University,” Fay said, giving Tyler a brochure of the school. “There’s a simplified school map inside. I’m going to tag along on one of their school excursions to the port of Singapore tomorrow, disappear, and go back in the next day. They won’t even know I was gone.”

“You can stay that low key?” Tyler asked, “If you had told us that you were going to be a university student, we wouldn’t have needed to secure all these disguises for you.”

“The hair and eyes help me blend in. No one’s going to remember me that way. But blue hair and gold eyes? I’d be everywhere.” Fay said. “Anyway, I doubt the thumb drive’s still at the port, but I’m going to find clues. I need you to do checks on the possible list of suspects Thyline has probably already sent you and see if they’ve been travelling here in the past four months. I’ll be at your hotel room at six thirty sharp tomorrow.”

Tyler nodded and headed back to his hotel in a blue cab while Fay ducked into the crowd of students heading back to the university and set up a plan in his head for the next day.

The next morning, Fay woke up at six in the morning, propelled by the energy he could feel along the hostel’s corridors. He grabbed his cover sling bag and slung it over his short-sleeved shirt and burgundy pants.

Battle gear, on.

--

At 6.30pm sharp, Tyler heard a series of light raps on the door. He blacked out the keyhole in his door with a towel before listening out for Fay’s impatient tapping.

“Open up you idiot,” Fay said irritably, and Tyler cracked the door open. “I have information.”

“Password,” Tyler said, and Fay poked his eye through the crack. Tyler noticed that Fay had taken out his brown contacts and was ready to comment on it when Fay glared at him.

“I don’t have time.” Fay said in a low voice, and Tyler shrugged and opened the door.

“Works for me.”

Fay immediately set up his laptop on the dark wooden desk in the room, opening a few files side-by-side. He waited for Tyler to walk over before speaking.

“I tracked down the shipping container’s number,” Fay said, “It hasn’t left the port yet, so I decided to take a look.”

“How did you even manage to get in?” Tyler asked, and Fay waved him off. Tyler rolled his eyes, Fay’s unwillingness in sharing information getting on his nerves. “We’re partners, you know.”

“No we’re not,” Fay mumbled. “Anyway, I stole into the container and got it. It was easy to identify. I think someone’s tampered with it, though, because when I tried to read the files, there was an encrypted software I couldn’t get past.”

“And that’s what I’m here for,” Tyler murmured, and leaned closer into the laptop, putting his hands on the keyboard. “You didn’t think we would’ve let this baby go without any protection, did you?”

Fay rolled his eyes. “Of course I didn’t. I’ve already gotten through that.”

Tyler stopped in his tracks and stared at Fay, willing him to go on.

Fay licked his lips slowly and leaned back in his chair, savouring the drama he was creating.

“Someone’s gotten through your walls, and put theirs up.”

--

Tyler ran a hand through his hair and breathed out slowly.

“We’re going to have to bring this back to Thyline first thing tomorrow,” Tyler said, getting his phone out. “I’m booking us two economy seats back to Los Angeles tonight. She’ll meet us there. Delete your place at the university now.”

“Make it tomorrow afternoon,” Fay replied, not even glancing at his laptop, where he could wipe his face and information off of the university’s servers in one click. “We’ve got more important things to do first.”

“Trust me, there is nothing more—” was as far as Tyler got before Fay was kissing him. Tyler’s body refused to respond, and so he stood still, fixed to the floor, as Fay kissed him deeply on the mouth.

“You’re doing this,” Tyler said slowly after Fay moved away. “This is just like a gay porno, you know that? We’re talking about serious stuff, and then, bam, sex.”

“Take your shirt off,” Fay replied, and Tyler complied.

“Thyline’s going to kill us,” Tyler murmured, and Fay laughed as he splayed his cold hand out on Tyler’s bare chest.

“No, she isn’t. And besides,” Fay said, dropping his voice lower as his other hand towards Tyler’s belt. He unbuckled the belt and Tyler bent down to kiss him.

--

Three years, three months, fifteen days.

That was how long they had dated, how long they had spent ‘in love’. On the third year, in the third month, on the night of the fifteenth day, Tyler had heard the words fall out of Fay’s mouth and had never stopped hearing it since.

“I don’t think we work well together,” Fay had said, and Tyler had tried to come up with a counter to that, until he’d realised that he couldn’t.

That was nearly seven years ago, and Tyler still thinks about it every day of his life.

When he’s sparring with Coco in the special gym they’d built in Bionic, when he’s jumping down buildings to make a quick getaway, and especially when he’s sprinting around an abandoned military base to get a more interesting exercise regime underway. He has never once stopped thinking about Fay and what they could’ve been, and what they could’ve achieved together if he hadn’t left a month after their break-up to be experimented on.

“You’re slow today,” Coco says, the hard heel of her foot pinning Tyler’s chest to the gym’s floor, her silver hair sweaty and matted in a ponytail hanging behind her head. “What’s up with you?”

“Hazardous,” Tyler pants out, and gently pushes Coco’s foot off of his chest. He stands up and splashes water onto his face, shivering at the cold liquid hitting his face. “We haven’t found a way to penetrate them yet.”

“Wait till you see what my brother got us,” Coco grins, joining him. She takes a long glug of water from her bottle and sets it down. “You know he’s been double-crossing them, right?”

Tyler nods, and sips an energy drink from his bottle. “He’s good at this stuff, isn’t he?”

“Really good.” Coco agrees, and they head out of the gym together, feet hitting the steel floor beneath simultaneously.  “He’s got the entire blueprint memorised floor to floor, and he just transferred me the security specifics.” She reaches into the pocket of her sweatpants and brings out a flat transparent rectangle. She presses down on it with her right thumb, and the screen lights up with blue lights.

“I’ll transfer it to you the moment I’m done showering. Once you’re ready, we’ll call a meeting and go over and pummel those yellow bastards to the ground.” Coco smiles and pats Tyler’s shoulder. “It won’t be long before we’re the only ones left to harness the radiation. This is going to be the greatest battle ever. I can’t wait.”

Tyler looks over at her and smiles. She enters her room while he continues to walk down the long corridor leading to his. Once he’s in his room, he strips himself bare and walks into a personalised shower, where water shoots out in jets at specific intervals, giving him just enough time to lather up before he’s washed clean again.

When he’s out of the shower, Tyler wraps himself in a towel and walks to his bed and sits down on the soft duvet. As expected, the files are already in his communication device, and he scrutinises them for hours, his hand on his chin and his green eyes glued to the blue light in front of him.

Then comes a knock on his door, and he dresses quickly before answering it. Coco’s standing on the other side in her full battle gear, her violet eyes glowing bright and her silver hair long and curly, spilling over her shoulders.

“Are you ready?” she asks, and Tyler nods.

“Let’s assemble.”

--

Tyler remembers their first time well.

He was running late for their date, and he hadn’t seen Fay in a month because Fay had gone to Russia for an exchange programme. When he reached Fay’s room, he was met with arms around his neck and kisses to his lips.

It had been quick, and messy, and full of uncertainties, but at the end of it they were so happy they had just kissed each other and went to sleep wrapped in each other’s arms.

It’s the image of Fay’s peacefully sleeping face that Tyler’s trying to push out of his head as they break through the first wall of security, enabling them to prowl the first floor of the compound.

“It’s so quiet,” Tyler whispers to Coco as they look for the main lock. “Why is it so quiet?”

“I don’t know,” Coco replies, “JC said that they’d all be here, and he wouldn’t. But even so, we should’ve seen some guards by now.”

Tyler curses under his breath and looks around the compound. “I’ll go search for them. You continue breaking through their walls.”

Coco nods, and Tyler sprints over to the main dorm building. He climbs two storeys up and lands on a balcony on the third floor. He taps on the glass repeatedly till he finds a soft spot, and pours a mixed chemical on it. The glass disintegrates rapidly, until all that’s left is a window pane with no window.

He walks into the dark room and his night vision lenses activate. He does a quick scope of the room and finds an old fashioned manila envelope on the desk.

After he opens it and reads its contents, he jumps off of the balcony and walks to Coco, the invitation trembling in his hand.

--

“I know why none of them are here,” Tyler mutters, handing the elaborately-designed card over to Coco. “Fay has always been a lover of the classics.”

“We cordially invite you to…” Coco reads out loud, before she realises what she’s about to say and clamps her mouth shut. “So they’re all there?”

“Yeah,” Tyler says, his eyes looking to the floor as he feels his heart slowly tear apart. “They’re all there.”

“So do we bring the whole operation to that place? It’s an hour’s journey away.” Coco says carefully, gauging Tyler’s reaction.

He’s silent for a few minutes, and the other members are starting to gather around them. Then, he lifts his head and speaks with a watery confidence.

“Let’s burn this whole thing down.”

--

The idea is simple – bring the entire compound to a blazing, melting heap of nothing so that Hazardous may never rise up against them again. All their equipment resided in this one mammoth area, and Tyler wants to set it all ablaze. At this point, he doesn’t care that doing so would release tonnes and tonnes of toxic gases, doesn’t care that doing so would be unnecessarily excessive or over-the-top; all he cares about is that he gets to see giant flames atop years of his ex-lover’s work.

When the other members are busy setting up the foundations for their great fire, Tyler slips into Fay’s room and grabs all the things he deems important and keeps them in a separate briefcase. When he slides it into his motorcycle, Coco doesn’t say a word about it, and Tyler doesn’t comment on the fact that when he had stopped by JC’s room, it was swiped clean.

They’re done with the preparation in less than an hour, and Tyler orders the rest of the members back to their vehicles before Coco and he set the establishment ablaze.

The flames go up a second after they’re safely next to their vehicles. Flames of purple, yellow, red, blue and orange lick up at the harsh sky, rising and falling and creating an immensely powerful heat. Tyler tells the members to go, and Coco leads them back to the base. She takes a look back to both ensure that the members are following her and to look into Tyler’s eyes. He nods and she turns back around, and he knows that she got his message loud and clear.

He revs up the engine of his motorcycle, making sure the briefcase is in place, and drives off in the opposite direction of his members.

--

By the time he reaches the place the wedding was held, the doors are closing and the guests are filing out. However, when they glance his blue-and-black uniform, they spring into action. In ten seconds, they have him on his hands and knees on the ground.

Tyler doesn’t resist.

“What are you doing here?” One of the Hazardous members asks, gun pointing at Tyler’s head. “How did you know about this?”

Tyler stays silent and keeps his chin to his chest and his eyes closed.

“What’s going—” he hears, and he crushes his eyelids together even harder. “Tyler.”

Fay tells them to stand down and he cautiously approaches Tyler, much to the audible distress of his new groom.

“Tyler,” Fay says, his voice gentle and free of malice, and Tyler wants to grab him and tell him he’s made the biggest mistake of his life, but doesn’t. “Why are you here?”

Tyler opens his eyes and gets up so that he’s kneeling on the floor.

“I saw your invitation,” Tyler says, and Fay’s eyes go wide. “Your entire base is gone now, but I spared all of you. You should be happy about that.”

The Hazardous members start to shout and point their weapons at Tyler once again, but Fay waves them off, anger in his veins but calm capturing his mind.

“I don’t even care if you kill me anymore. I was just the brawn. Coco’s the brains,” Tyler announces, and he can feel a gun pointing at the back of his head. “And with you gone,” he lowers his voice, looking at Fay with beaten eyes. “I don’t really have a cause for this.”

“I was experimented on and put into this organisation. At first, I just really wanted us to make the human race into the most useful, efficient life forms they could me. My role was to formulate and carry out attacks on you to ensure that you wouldn’t mess with our plans. But now that that’s all done and taken care of, I’ve lost my purpose.” Tyler continues to look at Fay’s gold eyes, and notices the way Fay gulps as he says this. “I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you. I’ve lost everyone else. I couldn’t lose you.”

Tyler stands up carefully, and a bullet hits the spot where his foot was as he starts to walk to his motorcycle.

“Don’t fire!” Fay shouts, and gets up to follow Tyler.

“Don’t do this,” Fay says, eyes biting into Tyler’s skin, and Tyler feels Fay grab his arm. “If you want a purpose, go back to Bionic and find one. But please – don’t do this.”

“It’s a time bomb,” Tyler whispers, and drags the briefcase out. He hands it over to Fay and sighs when Fay doesn’t accept it. “Not the briefcase, you idiot.”

“How am I to know?” Fay murmurs, and Tyler can’t help but smirk a little. When Fay reaches for the briefcase, however, Tyler catches a glimpse of his wedding band, and he feels a knife go through the remains of his heart.

“Thanks,” Fay says when he realises what’s in the briefcase, and Tyler wants nothing more than to hug him or to hold him. He does neither of those. “There’s really no way I can help you. They will find you and hunt you – my orders or not.”

“It won’t be much of a hunt, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” Tyler laughs bitterly, and Fay looks down at his feet.

Tyler’s suddenly struck with a memory of when he found Fay, bloody and unconscious on the bathroom floor, and he had screamed his lungs out trying to get his gold eyes to open. Eventually, after weeks spent in a hospital, Fay had come around to Tyler sobbing and grabbing at his hospital gown, and had vowed never to do that to him again. He had stroked Tyler’s hair while Tyler slept on his chest that night, something that he had done very often before and after that incident, and Tyler remembers loving the feeling of Fay’s fingers running through his hair.

“I love you,” blurts Tyler, and Fay’s head snaps up. Tyler has never told him this – never. He was always too afraid, too cowardly to say it, but now he has to say it, because he knows time is running out for him. “I always have.”

“I thought you’d stopped,” Fay says.

“Who says I did?” Tyler says, and Fay kisses him lightly on the cheek.

“I’m sorry,” Fay whispers. “If I had known –”

“Funny how timing works,” Tyler mutters, and he can see, over Fay’s shoulder, the new groom pointing a gun straight at him.

“Yeah,” Fay says softly, and Tyler shoves him out of the way.

“What—” is all Fay says before Tyler cuts him off.

“I’m sorry for ruining your day. I love you.” Tyler repeats, looking at Fay, and Fay’s eyes widen.

“No—” is what Tyler hears last before his world goes black, and he feels himself falling before he feels the pain from the bullet,  which is peculiar but good for him.

And in a rush, it’s over.  

--

Be in the right place, at the right time.

Tyler breathes out, his breath crystallising in front of him. He smiles sadly at the frozen specks in front of him and grabs at it, slowing down time around him.

This is his power, the power he was gifted with the moment he was born, and he had used it mostly for his own indulgent wants.

When his sister succumbed to radiation, he had used this power to spend a little more time with her, and had let his tears flow freely when he had stretched the second she finally let go into twenty. He could still his mother screaming and sobbing while he sat, alive in the dead time, alive when she was dying, alive when his mother’s heart was breaking.

After that, he had thought of how guilty he felt, prolonging his sister’s pain for his own selfish want, and had cut himself off from using it until he met Fay.

He remembers the day he met Fay as vividly as if it were just yesterday, when he was eighteen and Fay was sixteen, and when they had passed each other in the hallways of their school.

“My name is Tyler,” Tyler had said, a hand extended towards Fay. “You’re cute.”

Fay had looked at his hand questioningly and left hurriedly, not bothering to say a word. Tyler had furrowed his eyebrows and spun around to get one last look at Fay, and had resisted the strong urge to slow time down so that he could get one more glimpse of Fay.

The next day, he had found out which classes Fay was in, and had waited for him after some of his classes just to talk to him.

There was just something about him, something Tyler couldn’t put his finger on at the time.

When he realised what it was years later, he had broken down and screamed, long and loud, and had wished for his power to speed time up, just so he could get over his heartbreak faster.

--

The moment Tyler touches the ice crystals, they melt in slow motion, and he lets go of time to watch them drip down his palm and travel down his arm.

He wipes his wet hand on his trousers and trudges through the snow back to his apartment, gets in, and locks the door behind him. He prepares a dinner of instant noodles and egg and sits down in front of his television, turning on Discovery Channel.

When the MythBusters come on, he’s struck by a memory of when Fay was twenty-one and he was twenty-three, and wonders how he didn’t catch on at the time.

--

“You’re an idiot,” Fay laughed, tipping Tyler over and smashing cream into his face. “You’re an idiot.”

“Alright,” Tyler said, spitting out cream from his mouth and blowing his nose to clear it of cream as well, “Alright, birthday boy. Enough’s enough.”

“It was your idea,” Fay pointed out, grinning. “Cream pie, face, birthday bash. Right?”

“It was meant for you,” Tyler mumbled, and Fay responded by scooping a whole handful of cream from the cream pie and smearing it all over Tyler’s neck.

“Meant for me, used on you,” he muttered, and Tyler sat up from where he was on the floor, wiping the cream from his neck and smudging it on Fay’s arm. He pushed Fay over and landed on top of him, craning his head into his neck and planting his hands on either side of Fay to keep from crushing him. Fay laughed into his ears, a loud and boisterous laugh Tyler had never heard come from him before, and Tyler cracked a smile.

When they calmed down, Tyler looked from the floor to Fay, and Fay looked back at Tyler. They stayed there for a couple of seconds, and Tyler bit his lip, and did it.

He slowed time down and saw Fay’s eyes blink slowly, and he revelled in the way those gold eyes shone back at him before a flutter in his heart made him jolt from his control over time and Fay’s eyes were on him again, his breath coming regular and hot against Tyler’s chest.

“Sorry,” Tyler mumbled, and scrambled up while Fay sat up.

“It’s alright,” Fay said, and ran a dirty hand through his hair. “It’s late.”

“I should be going,” Tyler said, “And you should be getting cleaned up.”

Fay looked at him, and his mouth opened slightly before closing again.

“I don’t have any clothes here,” Tyler mumbled, and removed his shirt, the only article of clothing completely covered in cream, and reached for his jacket. He put it on and zipped all the way up to cover his bare skin and threw his shirt at Fay. “Here. Take it. I can’t use it anymore anyway.”

“Do I look like a rubbish disposal to you?” Fay scoffed, but folded it up carefully anyway. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Tyler agreed, and walked out of Fay’s block.

With his hands in his pockets, Tyler hadn’t even thought twice about what had happened with Fay back at his apartment, but now, he sighs into his bowl of cold noodles, and sips the soup from his spoon.

If only.

If only he had been at the right place, at the right time.

--

When Tyler’s done with his noodles, he washes the bowl and lets it dry on a rack, then heads to his bedroom to have a quick shower. As he’s lathering up, he’s hit by a memory two years old, and gulps his feelings down into his chest.

--

Fay had told Tyler that he loved him when Tyler had confessed his feelings towards him.

Loved.

Past-tense.

“You were my everything from the day I met you till about a year ago,” Fay had said, one hand in his pocket, the other on his luggage. “I’m sorry. I can’t get those feelings back.”

Tyler had nodded and looked towards the floor, wishing that he could speed up time, when Fay had spoken again.

“So maybe this is good,” Fay had said, smiling without meaning it, gesturing to the departure gates. “I won’t see you for a while, you won’t see me for a while. Maybe this is good.”

“Maybe it is, but you’re still my best friend. I thought we were going to see each other every month and meet up on holidays and all that stuff,” Tyler had replied, all the while begging his eyes to stop watering. “Is that not going to happen now? Just because—”

“I don’t think I’m going to have the time,” Fay had interrupted, gripping his luggage tighter. “And with this – it was really hard for me to keep going. You know that. I can’t let you do that.”

“I think your way is worse,” Tyler’s voice had broken at this, and he had clenched his fist at his side, but Fay had powered on, hitting him with wave after wave of logic and reasoning and apologies.

“You will always be my best friend,” Fay had assured him, taking his hand out of his pocket and placing it on Tyler’s chest. “I’ll still text you, I’ll still Skype you. You’ll see me, and I’ll see you.”

“Right.” Tyler had said, and then Fay was on his way, and Tyler had used his power again, testing the elasticity of time, making it go to its limit before letting it spring back into place.

The minute Fay took to walk away from his life was enormous, both on the toll it took on Tyler even a year after, and the length of time it took for Fay to walk away in his mind.

Tyler lathers up the soap on his body and lets his showerhead slowly shove the soap bubbles off of his body. Warm water cascades down, forcibly pushing the soap clean off Tyler’s tan skin, and when the water’s all that is left, Tyler turns the shower off and gets out of it.

If only.

--

Tyler sits down on his bed, his towel around his neck and his pyjama bottoms around his waist. He swipes a picture frame off of his nightstand and takes out the ticket and newspaper articles he has stuffed in it carefully. This was his nightly ritual, one that he took part in no matter what kind of day he had had, no matter how he felt that night, no matter who he was with, because it reminded him of the only person he would have slowed time down for.

‘Twenty-six-year-old takes the world by storm with his controversial new treatment’

‘Fayren Raye to fly to London for research purposes’

He shuffles through the pile, catching glimpses of Fay’s face with his public smile, completely different from the smile that he had when he was with Tyler.

‘Fayren Raye in critical condition after laboratory mishap’

‘Fayren Raye, twenty-seven, dies after a month-long coma’

Tyler stops at the very last one, a tribute to Fay made by a fan of his work just three months ago, and holds it tightly in his hands. He wonders if, had he been there at the right place at the right time, he would’ve been able to convince Fay not to go to London, would’ve been able to keep him in this world for longer; would’ve been able to prolong his time here.

The plane ticket is the one he holds yet, is the one that he was going to use to fly to London to be with Fay, is the one that he had never used, and thinks about what might have happened had he been in seat A52, heading for London, England, on a giant passenger airplane.

He feels tears well up in his eyes and quickly shakes his head and blinks rapidly so that the tears don’t fall, then slots the ticket and articles back into the picture frame cautiously.

He places the frame back onto his bedside table and turns off the lights in his room, getting beneath his cold sheets and flopping his head onto his pillow. He thinks of Fay’s gold eyes, and how his lips spread out when he smiled, and closes his green eyes.

He makes time slow down one last time, around him, as he submerges himself in his memories, and prolongs Fay’s stay with him that night for just a moment, before releasing it and allowing himself to succumb to a helpless slumber, dreaming of what-could-have-been’s all the way.

If only, was his last thought before he fell into a deep sleep.

If only.

----------

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