#tyjc

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

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