Chapter Text
I don't know how it all happened. I think it started with insomnia. Then there were balls cancer, Marla, Tyler, soap, Paper street house, fight club, project Mayhem and this. My best friend who I have a crush on is trying to blow up half the city. I really don't know if Tyler is trying to be the next Unabomber or destroy capitalism or what it's all about anymore.
Either way, I'm pretty sure this building won't blow up. I know what he's thinking, I fucking feel like I'm in high school again and I'm so stupidly in love I just know everything about my crush.
In fact, now that I think about it, I know where this nonsense began. Things started to go wrong when Lou beat Tyler and he decided not to even defend himself. Maybe he was hit too hard in the head? Maybe he’s just fucked up. Maybe he has always been a fucking sociopath.
I'm surprised I haven't shot him yet, I'm the one with the gun. I guess I just know it won't change anything, there are already too many space monkeys.
Anyway, who am I trying to fool? I'm too in love with him to pull the trigger when he's in the crosshairs.
Tyler has his back to me, leaning against the large window to watch the explosion of the corporate buildings, that is about to happens
„Tyler-” I basically purr out „-You mix paraffin with nitroglycerin, Didn’t you?” I glance at him over my shoulder.
He turns to me menacingly.
I smile weakly, looking at the gun in my hand.
„Paraffin never works” I say as I raise the gun to my chin.
He violently spins the swivel chair, I'm sitting in. He frowns in confusion when he sees what I'm doing with the gun.
I look at him from below. I know my eyes are probably glazed.
„I had to do this” I say and I pull the trigger.
Because after all, it all started when Tyler met me. Tyler may be the dynamite, but I was the tinder.
I'm Jack's gushing blood.
I know something's gone wrong as soon as I hear a gunshot. If that shot had killed me, I would have died before I heard it. In fact, all I feel is a strange feeling as if my eyes have fallen out of their sockets and I can taste the smoke.
I sit, the gun still in my hand, though the recoil made me pull it away from my head. My eyes work though I feel tears streaming down my cheeks. I can see smoke coming out of me, probably from my mouth. Why am I even alive?
I look up again. Tyler looks completely different now, he looks terrified.
„Fuck” he spoke up, his voice shaking.
I don't think I've ever heard his voice tremble. At the same time, I hear the elevator go up to this floor.
Tyler moves like a predator, his hand appears on my neck. Only then do I feel the pain, terrible, tearing, suffocating pain. Of course, as soon as possible I try to escape from his touch. He gets up from his chair so abruptly that it topples over behind me. Then I feel something dripping from me. I look at the ground, I see patches of black, I look at Tyler, I see black liquid like tar on his hands. I remember that blood appears black in the dark.
Then it comes to me. He grabs the side of my neck and that awful pain goes through me again, so I quickly pull my hand away. I'm still holding the gun.
I feel my knees go weak.
„Fuck? What have you done?” Tyler grabs me and puts his hand to my wound, probably trying to stop the bleeding but it hurts.
„Stop it” I say sliding to the ground, Tyler sliding with me.
I realize my voice is weirdly low, so low I could be Batman.
I try to defend myself from Tyler but it doesn't work. He's always been better than me at fighting.
He put his other hand around me and moved me closer to him, I think he do that so I would stop defending myself.
„Tyler, stop it” I repeat,
More tears roll down my cheeks, it hurts so damn much, I should be dead by now.
I hear the voices of space monkeys. Tyler is talking, I think he's screaming, I don't know, I'm feeling faint.
More tar is spilled.
Or maybe it's oil?
Oh right, that's my blood.
„Jack, don’t fall asleep” Tyler speaks to me in a protective tone.
I must have been unconscious for a moment, because I'm in some car. Tyler holds me tight. The car drives like it’s in NASCAR. I'm cold.
„Go faster!” Tyler yells after a moment.
„Our people are ready to admit him to intensive care” says one of the space monkeys.
I don't have a gun anymore, they had to take it from me. Now my hands are clenched on Tyler's undershirt. Everything is in tar.
Oil, what America is built on, is pouring out of me. Maybe it was always oil, maybe in the fight club it was always oil pouring out of us. You know, the American Dream or something. If I go to hell for falling in love with a guy, will I be drowning in tar for eternity?
God, why did it have to end like this with Tyler? Why couldn't we be happy like Ozzie and Harriet? We could have just sold soap and lived in this shack. We could have been terrorists of the gastronomy. My life really sucked. I didn't tell Tyler that I was totally in love with him. We could have such a wonderful life together and make heart-shaped soaps on Valentine's Day.
It's dark, I guess that's it. That's life after death. There is no heaven or hell. Just boredom.
Then I hear those fucking beeps and smell the disinfectant detergent. He immediately realizes that I am not dead at all. Anyway, I guess I'm glad I'm still alive.
I open my eyes lazily. A fluorescent lamp shines above my head. My head hurts, my throat hurts, my eyes hurt, and I swear I hear the sound of that fucking lamp.
I scan the room, spot him pretty quickly, he's not that easy to miss. He has different clothes than last time. How long have I been dead?
He sits by my bed, rests his head on the edge of my mattress. He holds my hand, tight. We are alone in this room, there is no nurse or other patient here.
I feel that I have an oxygen mask on my face, I feel that my throat is fucked up so I don't even try to speak. I just poke him in the shoulder with the hand he's not holding.
Tyler quickly straightens up and stares at me. It's only now that I fully realize that he cut his hair like other space monkeys. Too bad, I always had fantasies of stroking his dirty blonde hair.
„Why did you do that?” he asks me sternly.
„No, don't talk, it'll hurt you” he adds right away.
Since when does my well-being matter to him so much? Didn't we fight in that fucking office building?
There is a pained expression on his face, as if he is in pain. I can see that he has mixed feelings about me. I can see that on the one hand he wants to hit me and hug me on the other.
„I didn't know you were so suicidal, or you still are-” now he said quite simply, looking away from me. „-I didn't expect you to shoot yourself with that gun. Maybe I thought you were going to shoot yourself in the foot or something, but not that this gonna happen-”
Why is he telling me this?
„-I thought you were really going to die for a moment”
I feel like I should say something but physically I can't.
„Fuck, why did you shoot yourself and not me?” Tyler asks even though he knows I can't answer him.
The answer is quite simple though, he means a lot more than my life to me. With him, I felt alive for the first time in years. And it wasn't as fleeting a feeling as support groups gave me. It was more than a sense of relief, that I didn't have any terminal illness.
„And you literally did it looking into my eyes” he added.
I admit it was pretty cheeky. But he should see it as my revenge for that car accident.
„Anyway, nothing exploded, I told them it was just a test” he says.
I knew that, but I still breathe a sigh of relief.
He runs his hand over his head as if he's forgotten, that his hair isn't there.
„You're lucky you're a horrible shooter-“ he continues. „-You actually hit the side of your throat. You damaged your artery, but you didn't tear it apart completely. A few millimeters of difference and you'd probably be dead within two minutes, choking on your own blood”
Sounds lovely.
My head hurts like hell, I can't say anything and if I'm being honest I'm glad Tyler is here, next to me. Plus, he hasn't let go of my hand since I woke up. I don't know what will happen to us now. I don't know if Tyler is officially a terrorist already and if I'm officially a suicidal man.
I grip his hand a little tighter which catches his attention. I think I'll be unconscious for a while longer.
*
My insurance has nothing to do with the help I got after shooting myself. It's all thanks to the space monkeys, even some super doctors are space monkeys and I don't know how I feel about that. Is it already a terrorist organization, or maybe a cult? If so, how many people already belong to it? Should I expect a visit from the FBI agents?
I spent a week in the hospital and didn't get any bill for it. I had nothing to say, Tyler spoke for me, though he was more just giving orders to a space monkey. My whole neck is bandaged. The doctor advised me not to try to speak for the next week. He prescribed me some strong painkillers. He also told me to be careful with the stitches.
And that's it. May I add that Tyler doesn't leave me alone for a moment and even when I go to the bathroom he makes such a grumpy face, because I don't let him go with me. After that week in the hospital, we returned to Paper Street house in a private space monkey taxi.
The house turned out to be completely empty. Not a single space monkey, just me and Tyler. Everything was as before this madness or project Mayhem. In addition, I noticed that someone had installed a lock on the front door. I go to the living room where all these books and magazines are, because I remember one thing I found there once. I feel Tyler's eyes on my back as I search for it.
I find it in two minutes, it's a black notebook, that's blank except for a few pages of reminders when some magazine comes out. Or rather, when it came out, it was about fifteen years ago. I know there are some pens on the windowsill in the kitchen. So I go get one pen and quickly start writing in the notebook.
"Is Marla safe?"
I hold the notebook in front of Tyler's face.
„Since when do you care so much about her?” he says.
Jealous. He’s jealous. As I was jealous of him, now he is jealous of me.
"Since you wanted to get rid of her" I write, frowning.
He reads it and looks up at me.
„She was distracting you” he replies.
I close the notebook, such a conversation with him makes no sense. I'm going upstairs to my room. I'm throwing myself onto my mattress like a dramatic Disney princess. I hear Tyler is going upstairs too. I hear him enter my room and approach my mattress. I feel the mattress sink under his weight as he lies down next to me.
„You scared the shit out of me” he sighs.
I turn to face him. He looks tired.
„How could I not notice that you wanted to kill yourself?” he continued.
„I didn't-“ I try to explain to him and I still sound like Batman.
„Shut up-” he silences me quickly.
„You have a hole in your throat, so shut up” he turned his back on me. „You'd leave me like everyone else” he speaks out of nowhere.
I lift my torso, I sit up after hearing that.
I'm Jack's curiosity.
I don't know much about Tyler's past, what his life was like before we met. I don't really know anything about his past. And now it seems to me that he has opened some doors in front of me. But walking through that door is asking questions, and I happen to be tongueless.
I move over to him, step over him so I can look him in the eyes. I give him a questioning look.
He looks at me but quickly looks away, this time he doesn't turn away, he just avoids my eyes.
Most of the time I have trouble just communicating with people and now I have to do it without words, it's even harder.
I reach out to him, slowly, as if I am trying to tame a wild animal. I grab him gently on either side of his head, wanting him to look at me. As he does it, I make the most questioning face I can.
„What do you want me to say? I got used to you. I got used to having someone waiting for me, that someone is just always by my side. You inspired me” he speaks softly.
Involuntarily, his last sentence made me snort. What did I inspire him to do? Blow up the building?
„Yes, you did. It was for you that I wanted to change it all. I wasn't the one working from nine to five. It wasn't me who couldn't sleep until he got a good beating or he had heard stories of human misery. It was you” apparently he can read my mind now.
I do not know what to think about it. I lay back down next to him. Tyler pulls me even closer to him and I don’t really think anymore.
These drugs they put me on make me feel like I don't feel anything. The only difference is whether I'm asleep or awake, and when I'm awake I spend most of my time in bed anyway. My eyelids are heavy and everything seems so… slow. Anyway, I still see Tyler out of the corner of my eye even when I'm sleeping. He is always somewhere near me. He changes my bandages because he told me not to do it myself. It may sound weird but it doesn't bother me at all. When Tyler left during the Mayhem project, when he left me alone with the space monkeys, I feel the loneliest I've felt in years. I missed him so much that now I really enjoy the fact that he spends every minute with me and almost never leaves me alone.
Now the question comes to me. Does Tyler think I'm going to try to kill myself again?
„Tyler?” I speak up, stopping eating cereal that is my breakfast even though it's the middle of the day.
„Hm?” he mutters, then bites off a piece of apple he has in one hand.
He is sitting on the kitchen counter and he holds a book in his other hand, he doesn’t look away from it. If he wasn't wearing a Hawaiian shirt and suede sweatpants with some sequin writing on the butt, he could be the model for some ancient Greek sculpture.
„Do you think I'm suicidal?” I ask, staring at him.
When he hears that, he quickly glares at me and jumps off the kitchen counter.
„I don't think that, I know it” he replies. „Besides, you shouldn't try to talk for two more days” he adds quickly.
I feel like a preschooler with this no-speak thing.
„But I’m not. I don't want to die” my voice is lower than normally but at least I don't sound like Batman anymore.
„Interesting. So why did you shoot yourself in the head?” he asks as if he’s challenging me.
„It was under the influence of the situation, I just felt helpless-“ I’m trying to explain.
„You literally shot yourself in the head!” he's arguing with me.
„I didn't want innocent people to die because of us!” I speak louder, my voice cracks.
„What innocent people? These were corporate office buildings, they were empty!” he threw the apple into the garbage can.
„Tyler, for god's sake, these are buildings in the city center, even if no one died under the rubble, people would get smoke inhalation! Do you know what the consequences of that would be?” I keep arguing.
At that, Tyler fell silent.
„Bob's death is too much for me, let alone something like this” I continue.
„You could have told me about it otherwise than by shooting yourself in the head” he speaks a little quieter.
„There was no time for that and you wouldn't listen to me” I answer even more quietly.
„So what you mean is if I calm down with all this revolutionaryism, you won't try to kill yourself” he runs his hand over his head as if he's forgotten again that his hair isn't there.
„I think so” I confess barely audibly.
I look down at the cereal floating in the milk bowl, not daring to meet his eyes.
„You want me to close fight club?” he asks in a rather ordinary tone for the importance of the question.
I know it's probably some kind of test or trick, but I'm saying it anyway „Yes”
„Okay” he replies simply, sitting down in a chair and opening the book, which is still in his hand.
I sneak a glance at him, his expression telling me nothing. It couldn't be that simple.
We slept on one mattress, it wasn’t strange for us. I guess that's what happens when you live together for such a long time.
I don't know exactly what woke me up in the middle of the night. When I open my eyes, I see Tyler's outline as he sits hunched over. I can hear him breathing heavily. The moonlight illuminates the room slightly.
„What happened?” I ask quietly, my voice sounds awful.
He turns to me, strokes my hair gently „Nothing. Sorry if I woke you up”
His touch feels so nice. I reach out for him to put him back to the bed. I can feel the cold sweat on his hot skin.
„Did you have a nightmare?” I ask again.
„Yeah, about you leaving me” he answers barely audibly.
Is that what it's all about? He’s afraid that I will leave him?
„I’m not going anywhere” I say, pulling him to me.
„You promise?” Tyler says as he lies down so our foreheads are practically touching.
„I promise” I answer.
He hugs me closer to him. The side of my face touches his chest. He rests his cheek against my head. I hug him tightly.
Of course, the next day I wake up with no memories of the middle of the night and my brief awakening. I don't know what was a dream and what wasn't.
Just like that, with no thoughts in my head, I wake up in Tyler's arms and he holds me like his life depends on it. He's still asleep. I have no idea what to do, I don't know if I even should do something. Maybe I shouldn't do anything. In a way, it was a nice, warm feeling. I feel safe, although after recent events I think Tyler can be called a ticking bomb. But I know how to defuse that bomb, so it feels great.
Pleasant break of day
A second, warm bomb ticking
because of the boy
A quick haiku because I can't move or do anything.
Delightful morning
A savage, strong beast sleeping
in spite of the man
I bet people from my job, miss my haiku s. They were wonderful. Haikus, not people.
Bright paper street house
A dry, little throat shooting
betrayed by the gun
I notice Tyler drooling on the pillow, he looks so peaceful like that. I miss his hair a bit, I'd like to stroke them. They were so soft without the gel on them. How do I know that? I don't remember.
He’s warm and soft when he isn’t flexing all those muscles. Tyler is great for a pillow. I put the side of my head against his chest. I can hear the rhythm of his heartbeat. Sounds good. Very human, not like a bomb. I enjoy that.
When he wakes up, I feel his hands move on my back as he takes a deep breath. I wonder if he realizes the position he's in. I don't know how awake he is, maybe he's still half asleep. But he only hugs me tighter. Like I'm his dear lover or something. As if I was a beautiful woman, with shapely hips and breasts, a pretty face and a sweet smile. Not like a bony loser guy with a hole in the throat. He rubs his cheek against the top of my head, throws his leg over my hip as if holding me with his hands isn't enough.
I decide I'd better let him know that I'm awake. I run my hand over his biceps.
„Five more minutes” he whispers.
He hugs me even tighter.
„You’ll crush me” I snorted, digging my nails into his skin.
„You're like a teddy bear” his brain really hasn't woken up yet.
„Tyler, I can’t breathe” I'm trying to get out of his grip somehow.
Like a wrestler, he flips me over to the other side of the bed, then his grip isn't so tight.
„Can we just lie like this a bit more?” he asks, in a deep "I just woke up" voice.
„Sure, I'm in no hurry to get to work, you know?” I reply.
„I need to change your bandage”
„It can wait” I say as I run my hand over my bandaged neck.
At the same time, a thought occurs to me.
„Tyler, why do you care about me so much?” I ask quietly.
„Because I like you” he said it as if he was surprised by my question and as if it was obvious.
Oh, ow, I felt something stabbed into my heart
„I like you too” I basically whisper.