Chapter Text
Jacob is worried.
Par for the course, really. November is turning into December, which means longer nights, colder days, and those dreaded final exams. None of that is on his mind right now, however. His roommate, Tyler, is late coming home. Again, par for the course lately. He had started making frequent “study sessions” at bars up and down State Street two weeks before, conveniently coinciding with a strange text Jacob had received from Tyler about “some weird guys staring at me but don’t worry about it I can take them”.
A little too late for that, Tyler. Jacob is worried.
He lies on the couch in the common area of his apartment, gripping his phone while the television murmurs in the background. A bag of chips sits forgotten on the cushion next to him as he flicks through his roommate’s other text messages. Tyler has been uncharacteristically brief with his correspondences; his typical flowing paragraphs with excited declarations of his daily activities have given way to little “sure”s and “okay”s. Jacob isn't sure why he’s so concerned about Tyler like this. He isn’t a master communicator, neither of them are, but Jacob considers himself decent at noticing changes in people.
And Jacob doesn’t need to be an expert to see that Tyler has been acting seriously different from his normal self. The two have been great friends; they met in sophomore year and had been practically joined at the hip in the fourteen months since. Tyler has made it a point to try to include his roommate in any plans he had, whether they be studying, dinner, drinking (Jacob doesn’t drink, but he appreciates the sentiment), or anything else. And when they aren’t “doing something”, they’re talking about everything and nothing. The two would regale each other with stories of their days, or vacations, or plans for after college. They would talk trash about their professors, and debate over which of their classmates they wouldn’t be opposed to having sex with (though if a man’s name were ever mentioned, Jacob would notice the muscles in Tyler’s neck tense ever so slightly, and he would quickly change the subject).
However, since that text from two weeks ago had arrived, their near-inseparability had all but disappeared. Instead of inviting him, Tyler would announce, “I’m heading out. Don’t wait up,” leaving Jacob in the apartment swirling with anxiety and questions. Why did he start doing this so suddenly? Are those guys from the text hurting him? Is he seeing one of them? ( Why is that thought so troubling? )
This night was the eighth time in fourteen days that Tyler had gone out unprompted. Jacob had received little in explanation, other than “don’t worry about it,” “just working on something,” and “I’m fine”. He’s used to his roommate chattering on about eating a chicken sandwich, something he did multiple times a week, and now he wouldn’t say anything about suddenly and inexplicably disappearing at night under suspicious circumstances.
Yes, it’s easy to say that Jacob is worried.
Jacob is terrified.
So when a blunt thud falls against the front door, he is on his feet in an instant. He tries to catch a glance through the peephole before the wood pushes into his face and a disheveled form stumbles past the door frame. Jacob spins on his toes quickly, trying to follow the movement, and he pales.
Tyler’s brown hair is an utter mess, with random curls, spikes, and matted sections sticking out in odd places. Dark purple bruises and scuffed patches of dirt mark his forehead and cheekbones, contrasting with his golden skin. His bottom lip is split open, dried blood smeared across his cheeks and chin. Angry red marks circle around his neck in the shape of murderous fingers and hands. His chest, covered with the remaining tatters of his t-shirt, rises and falls with shallow breaths. Faint scrapes and scratches line his wrists and forearms, an obvious sign of struggle.
Collecting himself, trying to stand up straight as much as his worn muscles would allow, he addresses his roommate as he has done each time he had come back home late at night these past two weeks. “Hey, Jacob, how was your night?”
Jacob, the shorter of the two, chokes and sputters on his breath. He knows Tyler is stubborn about his self-preservation tactics (or lack thereof), but not “brush off serious bodily harm that could only have been conceivably done by someone else” stubborn. “I should be askin’ you that! What the hell happened?” he shouts, a slight Southern drawl breaking through as it does when he’s particularly excited, or stressed in this case.
Tyler’s shaky hand attempts to wave down his concerns, only succeeding in worrying him further. “It’s all good, Jakey. Just a little scuffle. It’ll all sort-”
“No, no, no , Ty. This is more than ‘just a little scuffle’,” Jacob all but yells. “Listen, I’m gonna clean you up, and you’re gonna tell me what happened tonight, and what’s been happening for the past two weeks. You’re really scaring me, man.”
A reluctant sigh passes Tyler’s lips. “Okay, fine , you can clean me up.”
Jacob grabs Tyler’s hand and drags him into the bathroom, a groan of protest escaping from the taller man, before Jacob collects their first aid items from under the sink. Bottles of peroxide, tubes of ointment, boxes of bandages, and enough cotton patches to fill a pillow are laid out next to the tub. Jacob helps Tyler out of his ruined shirt and muddy shoes and jeans, but before he can grasp the waistband of his underwear, he stops. He looks up to his roommate’s hazel eyes, still wild with adrenaline, in a silent plea for permission.
Tyler notices his hesitation and gives a breathy chuckle. “Nothing you haven’t seen before, babe,” he quips, a smug grin across his bloody face.
“Oh, shut up, roomie,” Jacob grumbles back, a little playful, though his eyes are still downtrodden. He gestures again towards the taller man’s last remaining clothing. “You want them on or off?”
“Oh, ho, now. Are you propositioning me, babe ?”
Jacob feels some tension release in his shoulders. He can see his friend gradually returning to his cheerful, joking mood from two weeks prior. “Come on, man, I appreciate the jokes, but you still need to answer my question.”
A short pause. The room is silent, except for the two men’s breaths and Tyler’s overworn heartbeat. The taller man shrugs, “Off, I guess, they’d just be getting dirty anyway.”
//
Now seated in the tub, Tyler lets a low growl escape from him. The cold plastic bites into his bruised back, sending shivers through his nerves. Jacob’s brow twitches in concern as he leans down and places his hand lightly on his friend’s tanned shoulder, trying to comfort both Tyler and himself. “It’s okay, you’re good,” he whispers, before lifting the bottle of peroxide and bag of cotton, “Though it’s about to hurt again, with all this chemical stuff.”
Their combined chuckles fill the room. Tyler does his best to shrug off his partner’s concerns, “Hey, it’s all good, man. Whatever you’re about to do won’t hurt any more than what happened at the bar.”
Whatever mirth Jacob had been feeling at his and Tyler’s banter quickly evaporates, and is replaced with the anxiousness that had plagued him for days now. “Yeah, I was gonna ask about that,” he says, a little harsher than he had wanted, but he’s too frustrated and worried to keep calm. “Why are you all beat up and bloody? Obviously someone tried to hurt you.”
“Mm.”
“That’s not really an answer, Ty.”
“It’s fine, Jakey, really. Just some dumb idiots. You know I can handle them.”
“Clearly you can’t, given how you were barely standin’ when you got back here,” Jacob responds, a careful sternness in his voice as he begins soaking a cotton patch with peroxide. “This is gonna sting,” he warns.
“Dude, my bones are fully aching right now.” Tyler’s tone indicates a joke, but if that’s the closest he’d come to being vulnerable about his health, then Jacob would accept it. He grumbles in acquiescence, then presses the soaked cotton onto a wide, shallow gash on his roommate’s cheek that had fortunately already stopped bleeding, and Tyler releases a long, rumbling groan. “Ohh, okay. Oh, yeah, that feels good.”
Jacob, in spite of himself, snickers. “Don’t make this weird, dude.”
“Jakey-boy, you’re the one who stripped me, sat me in the tub, and started taking care of me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to seduce me.”
Leave it to Tyler to completely disarm his friend and roommate. His words grab at Jacob’s throat and reduce him to choked stuttering, which makes it difficult to accomplish the two very important tasks he had set out for himself once the broken, trembling form of Tyler fell into his apartment: one, clean and cover his wounds (he would have let Tyler do it himself, but he looks about a hair’s breadth from a long, deep sleep, which he clearly needs and deserves), and, two, find out what has been making him so unlike himself for the past two weeks.
A quick, deep breath to settle himself, and then he begins, “Okay, Ty. Talk to me. What’s been going on? You’ve been off for days.”
Tyler, whose eyes are lightly closed in the strange bliss of peroxide stinging against his wounds, gives a noncommittal hum. “What do you mean, ‘off’?” he asks, not entirely present in the conversation, his brain more concerned with his rapidly decreasing levels of cortisol and adrenaline, and the constant, pounding aching throughout his body, cut by the fiery stinging of peroxide.
“Are you serious , Ty? You haven’t noticed how you just walk out of the apartment and refuse to tell me where you’re going or what you’re doing? I had to use my Snapchat map, which, sorry for breaking your trust like that, but I had to know where you were going. And it turns out you’re going to State Street, which you never do without asking me if I want to come with! What the hell are you even doing ?”
Finally, Tyler’s eyes open, at least telling Jacob that his wounded roommate hadn’t fallen asleep (though he wouldn’t hold it against him; the guy clearly needs to heal). Instead, Jacob sees frustration in the hazel eyes in front of him. Frustration, indignance, and… apology?
“Okay, yeah, I see what you mean,” he acquiesces. “Sorry for not telling you. But I don’t see why you’re so worried. I’m not hurt.”
Jacob scoffs. “How much blood did you lose on the way back? Because delirium induced by blood loss is the only way you could look into my eyes and say you’re not hurt right now.”
“Okay, okay, okay. Fine. I’m hurt. Is that what you wanted?”
“I already know you’re hurt, dummy. What I want is to know why . It looks like you were in a fight, since I don’t think tripping and falling could do,” Jacob gestures broadly at the scrapes, bruises, and gashes blemishing his friend’s normally smooth tanned skin, “all this.”
And there’s that look again. Tyler’s eyes first roll in annoyance, then start scanning quickly, as if surrounded by unknown, threatening figures ready to pounce at any moment. His breathing hastens, though with how drained he was when he had first settled into the tub, it’s more like he’s breathing at a normal rate. He mumbles, “Promise you won’t be mad?”
Jacob’s eyebrow raises slightly. “What do you mean? Why would I be mad at you?”
A faint whimper escapes from Tyler’s throat, and Jacob immediately ceases his motions on his wounded friend’s skin. He had never known the confident, gregarious Tyler to be so reserved and anxious. Whatever has been happening has to be incredibly scary in order to make him this unrecognizable .
“Well, um, yes, Jacob, I was in a fight. But it’s okay-”
The hand on Tyler’s shoulder, helping give Jacob the leverage to reach down his body, now grips tightly, wrenching a startled gasp from Tyler’s lungs. “ No , Tyler. It’s not okay. Listen, I know you think those ‘it’s okay to not be okay’ signs are crap, but they’re not. It’s clear that something’s wrong. You’ve never been in fights, you’ve never been out,” Jacob takes the chance to gaze fiercely into his friend’s eyes, “ studying late at night, and you’ve never hidden anything from me! So please, tell me what’s been happening, before I have to add to what those fools did to you tonight.”
Jacob studies his friend carefully. He watches how creases form in his forehead, tugging at some of the scabs in the early stages of formation. How faint tears begin escaping from his wrenched-shut eyelids, picking up dried blood and forming pink streaks down his cheeks. How his lip pulses and trembles, both from the inflammation and the effort to keep from… Is he about to cry? He never does that.
Tyler sucks in a wobbling breath. “There’s rumors…” he trails off, grimacing even tighter.
“Rumors?” Jacob prompts.
“ There’s rumors that I’m gay ,” Tyler forces out, so quickly that Jacob has to pause and make sure he heard him correctly.
“And?”
//
I lean against the wall at Mondays, one of the many bars on State Street, intermittently taking sips from my beer. I'm alone, again, for the eighth time in thirteen days. Normally, my shorter roommate would be here with me, taking water shots and overall having a grand old time in his own way, but I think it best if Jacob stays home for the time being. You never know what kinds of threats are prowling around Madison at midnight on a Wednesday.
The dim lights and loud music provide a good cover for me. I don’t want to be seen right now. Too much is going on: tests are coming up that I should probably be studying for, my parents won’t stop asking me about how I'm doing (as if they ever worried about that when I was home), and, oh yeah , these three idiots keep following me around and harassing me. I don’t know what I did to piss them off, but they keep running into me in different places around campus.
It started with staring. The three would leer at me from across the dining hall, or quad, or wherever. The biggest of the three was always in the middle, and he always had this disgusting smirk on his face, like an evil clown. Their eyes shot daggers directly through me. I felt naked, almost. I pulled out my phone to text Jacob about them, but something inside me prevented me from saying anything more than ‘there’s some weird guys staring at me but don’t worry about it I can take them’.
Then they started talking to me. The third time I encountered them, that gross guy in the middle called out, “Hey, dude!” but it wasn’t like how I would address my roommate, or one of my other friends. I was startled, and very confused, but kept walking. The next day, I heard that voice again, only this time much closer behind me. “How’s your boyfriend doing?” he growled out in a way that had me frozen on the spot. I whipped my head around, and now that he was closer, saw that the man had a buzz cut, and he and his two accomplices had sleeve tattoos. Not to mention their vicious stares and smiles.
And then they started getting handsy. Three nights ago, as I was seated on a bench in a quad on campus, one of the goons grabbed my shirt collar from behind, gave a firm tug so that my head fell back, and whispered into my ear, “Ugly faggot,” before pushing me away by my shoulders with enough sudden force that I stumbled and slipped on the pavement. I would’ve been angry if I had had enough time. Instead, I lay on the cold concrete in a stunned confusion.
I still have no idea why these people are bullying me like this. It’s real schoolyard shit. My roommate is loud-and-proud bisexual, so why not go after him? They did mention him once, and sure, I do hang around him a lot, but he’s literally my roommate , so of course I'm gonna be around him. It’s not like queerness is a disease that can be caught, otherwise why would they be anywhere near a college campus? Especially Wisconsin , no less?
So I stand there against the wall opposite the bar, stewing in confusion and frustration, when I feel a harsh pull on my shirt sleeve. It quickly turns into many hands pushing and grappling at me, leading me out the back of the bar. I don’t realize what’s happening until fists rain down on me and I'm sat on my ass in the cold November air. They keep punching me, kicking, dragging, rubbing my face into the pavement. I think I ought to be feeling some kind of pain, but I don’t. I feel nothing. Sure, I feel pebbles digging into my forehead, boots trampling over my shoulder blades, many kinds of liquid trickling down my cheeks, but I don’t feel anything.
I gave up being scared a long time ago. Now I'm just empty.
I hear what sounds like laughter, the kind made by a sixth grader who thinks he’s hot shit for taking a kid’s lunch money, followed by what I assume are the words “Now he ain’t a ‘ pretty boy’ anymore,” but the words are lost to the wind before my brain can truly process them.
I scrabble around for something to grab on to, before pulling myself up onto my feet and beginning a long, slow walk back to my apartment. Thank god for adrenaline.
//
“And I guess there’s people here who don’t like that.”
Jacob disengages from his roommate and straightens his back, getting a better look at him. He seems almost dead inside now, his eyes having lost a little of their golden sheen. That’s the scariest thing to Jacob. Tyler’s eyes are always glowing; to see them suddenly dim makes Jacob feel like a part of himself is missing.
“What about you? What do you think about the rumors?”
“I don’t know , okay?” Tyler’s fist meets the side of the tub, and he hisses at the pain shooting through his arm, as well as through his lip, which opens up again in his outburst. “Look, I know you came out a while ago, and you’re confident in yourself, and that’s great. But I’m not . I don’t know what’s going on with me.”
Silence fills the room, before slowly being overtaken by Jacob’s intensifying breathing. “Those goddamned cowards ,” he growls, fingers reaching into his red hair and gripping. Tyler is startled, and Jacob would be too if he wasn’t so clouded with anger at the mistreatment of his friend. “They wouldn’t attack me, because I’m proud of myself. So they go after you , because they think you’re insecure and you can’t stand up for yourself.”
Tyler sighs, “Well, that’s one way to lift up my ego.”
At least he’s still in somewhat of a joking mood. “I aim to please. But seriously, Ty, this is a bad situation you’ve found yourself in. That we’ve found ourselves in. If you’re ever feeling unsafe, all you need to do is tell me.”
Jacob feels betrayed, ashamed. If he had been a better friend and roommate, then Tyler would’ve come to him sooner, and this mess could’ve been avoided. But it’s too late now: Tyler is full of gashes and bruises left by homophobes who get off on driving people insane.
He screws the cap back onto the bottle of peroxide and begins rubbing ointment onto Tyler’s wounds, covering the larger ones with bandages. Luckily none of them need stitches. He works in silence.
Finally, he takes a hold of the hand nearest him and hoists Tyler out of the tub with some difficulty. He never knew that his lanky roommate could be so heavy . They walk out of the bathroom, not bothering to clean up the first aid materials strewn about the floor, and into their respective bedrooms. Jacob softly calls out, “Good night, Ty,” and gets a faint hum in response.
It’s enough for now.
//