#tyfay

[tinybitterasian]

[Tyler-centric] Chasing Home

Words: 1716 Warning(s): Slight Sexual Scene, Major Character Death Pairing(s): Tyler/JC, Tyler/Fay Summary: White-washed walls and the warmth of a thousand suns is how Tyler remembers June. Thirteen is when it all changes, and sixteen is when it all starts. Genre: Angst

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:

fay is 8 years older than tyler here & was picked up by the rival organisation at around the same age as tyler. red-head boy is JC & silver-haired girl is coco (who was in a r/s with fay before tyler f-ed everything up) & they both belong to vonna!! fay & tyler both belong to kel!! 

[124daisies]

Church of St Tyfai and St Faith, Lamphey

[0bscr3]

TYFAI

[thedimpause]

Visited Lamphey, Pembrokeshire for lunch yesterday and included a short detour to the (in parts) medieval St Tyfai’s Church in which I got married nearly 27 years ago:

and the nearest beach, Freshwater East:

Didn’t stay long, it was a very windy day 🙂

[nlgwj-esq]

FY NGHYLCHGRAWN I O'm GWYLIAU YN GADAEL PLANED Y DDAEAR (GAN GYNNWYS FY NGOR Â DUW HOLLALLUOG JEHOVAH, AC ANGEL O DDUW HOLLALLUOG).

 Gan Dr Neil Leslie Gilbert.-Williams-Jacksnai (Yn Cymru)

SWYDD DAU

I (Neil Leslie Gilbert.-Williams-Jacksnai) dim ond mynychu ysgol Sant Mihangel Eglwys Loegr, Croydon (dan esgobaeth Southwark) mass.

 Yn y maes heddiw, clywais Siôn Philip yn datgan mewn ysgrythyr rywbeth am: ' Mary mam Duw: yr Arglwydd Iesu Crist Emanuel ein Dduw, ' (A nodwyd hefyd gan Siôn Timothy mewn màs arall).

 Yn ôl yn y 1980au. Pan oeddwn i'n fach Rwy'n cofio rhan yr scripture (Mary mam Duw: yr Arglwydd Iesu Crist Emanuel ein Duw) pan sonnir amdano gan Ficer y cyfnod yn Eglwys Sant Stephen yn St Stephen's Terrace, Llundain SW8 1DH England, y Deyrnas Unedig (ficer Helen) mewn gweddïau , a'm cymysglyd yn Eglwys Sant Stephen, St Stephen's Terrace, Llundain SW8 1DH England, y Deyrnas Unedig, felly gofynnais i'r Parchedig Eglwys St Stephens, St Stephen's Terrace, Llundain SW8 1DH England, y Deyrnas Unedig (Parend Christopher);

' Mae'r Beibl Sanctaidd yn dweud yn llyfr Genesis y gwnaeth Duw Hollalluog y ddaear! ond ganwyd yr Arglwydd Iesu Crist-Emanuel ar y ddaear ar (tua) 25 Rhagfyr yn Bethlehem yn Judea, yn ne Palesteina yn nechreu 2 B. C. E [https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/when-was-jesus-born]. Felly, sut y gallai'r Arglwydd Iesu Crist Emanuel fod wedi gwneud y ddaear a'i ddynolryw os yw'n Hollalluog Dduw, fel yr oedd yr Arglwydd Iesu yn y Crist Emanuel wedi ei eni yn y cwymp cynnar o 2 B. C. E?`

 Rhoddodd y Parchedig Christopher wên gynnes a chyfarchiad dymunol i mi, gan fy ngwahodd i dderbyn cadarnhad. Cefais fy derbyn yn raslon. Gofynnodd y Parchedig Christopher pam y byddwn yn derbyn cadarnhad. Eglurais fod gennyf ddiddordeb mewn bod yn Gristion cydnabyddedig fel y credaf. Eglurodd y Parchedig Christopher y gellid, ar y foment honno, gael ei ddisgrifio fel llawer o eiriau, ond roedd yn flin ganddo am y rhan honno o'r ysgrythur hon a datgelodd ei farnau preifat mewn gramadeg sylfaenol. (Rwy'n disgrifio'r Parchedig Christopher fel un gofidus dros ben, ac yn ddig gyda'r rhai sy'n addysgu'n amhriodol ymhlith pwyntiau eraill). Fe'm Canmolodd am ofyn fy cwestiwn, a caniatáu i mi ei weld yn gwneud trefniant i gyfarfod â'i ficer. Ficer Helen, a fu'n dyst i'r Parchedig Christopher yn fy helpu i ymhelaethu ar fy ngeiriau; gred (yn awyddus i bob pwrpas fod yn sicr fy mod yn golygu hynny: Cred = Rwy'n credu mewn Duw Hollalluog).

 Yr oedd y Parchedig Christopher yn/yn hawdd mynd ato, yn grym ond yn llym ac yn ddibynadwy. Tyfais mewn ffydd. Gofynnwyd imi a oedd gennyf unrhyw gwestiynau. Ymatebais drwy ofyn os yw Duw Hollalluog yn fyw o hyd, a pham y gelwid Joseph yn dad yr Arglwydd Iesu, tad Crist Emanuel pe y'i crëwyd gan Dduw Hollalluog.

 Cefais wybod yn fras: Mae'r Arglwydd Iesu Crist Emanuel yn fab i Dduw Hollalluog (fel yr ydym oll yn ddisgynyddion Duw Hollalluog) yn enedigol o Feifod Mary, a'r gweddill byddaf yn dysgu yn yr ysgol Sul ac yn yr Eglwys, sydd yn y bôn yn addysgu o'r Beibl sanctaidd.

 Rwy'n cael fy atgoffa a dod o hyd i ateb mewn gras (a ddywedir ar ôl prydau):

"Rydym yn rhoi diolch i chi am eich holl fudd-daliadau. O ' hollalluog Dduw, sy'n byw ac yn teyrnasu am byth. Ac a all enaid y ffyddloniaid wyro, gan drugaredd Duw, orffwys mewn heddwch, amen "

 Soniais ddyddiau yn ôl, fy mod yng nghwmni Angel o Dduw (a ymddangosodd fel Gwryw yn unol â diffiniad Geiriadur Saesneg), a roddodd imi wyliau/gwyliau (oddi ar PLANED y ddaear) drwy gwennol. Mae angylion Hollalluog Dduw yn hysbys i I fel rhai ychwanegol-daearol. (Byddaf yn datgelu mwy wedyn).

 Roedd y cyflymder hedfan yn gyflymach nag unrhyw gyflymder awyren yr oeddwn yn ei adnabod o allan o raglen ffuglen wyddonol megis cyflymder ystumiad Star Trek. (Byddaf yn datgelu mwy ar ddiwrnod arall). Yn ystod fy ngwyliau/wyliau, bu Angel o Dduw Hollalluog a minnau'n siarad. Mewn cyfnod tawel o'm taith, gofynnodd Angel o Dduw Hollalluog i mi os oes gennyf unrhyw gwestiynau. Cefais lawer, er y gofynais am a wyddai Angel o Dduw Hollalluog pwy yw Duw Hollalluog, ac os yw Duw Hollalluog yn fyw o hyd. Roedd Angel o Dduw Hollalluog wedi cael ymateb seiniol graslon ac yna dweud wrth mi (Neil Leslie Gilbert.-Williams-Jacksnai) byddaf yn mynd â chi i'w weld yn fuan.

 Ar y foment y cyrhaeddais, (nad oedd yn syth o'm cwestiwn i Angel of God_ gan ysbaid o sawl awr) Dywedodd Angel o Hollalluog Dduw, dyma'r un y mae pobl yn ei alw'n Hollalluog Dduw. Meddyliais ar unwaith; Hollalluog Dduw'n fyw (byddaf yn datgelu mwy ar ddyddiad diweddarach)

 Un o'm hatgofion olaf pan ar wyliau/gwyliau oddi ar y ddaear yw, Angel o Almighty Duw ofynnodd i mi a oeddwn i eisiau mynd i'r haul. Yr oeddwn yn meddwl na fyddwn yn goroesi gan ei fod y tu hwnt i boeth, ond yr wyf yn ymddiried yn Angel o Dduw Hollalluog, ac yn dywedyd Ie. Pan gyrhaeddon ni (cael ein hedfan mewn i Angel o freichiau Hollalluog Dduw (fel Angel o Dduw Hollalluog gall hedfan/gael adenydd (cyfieithiad Geiriadur Saesneg agosaf)) Angel o Hollalluog Dduw a'm cyflwynodd i'r arch Angel, a oedd yn eistedd (mewn seddi) wrth y ffin y tu ôl i'r haul ( sydd fel llecyn mawr golau o fflam mydryddol wedi ei strwythuro fel cylchYn (sffêr) tu mewn i ddrych troi. (Byddaf yn datgelu mwy ar ddyddiad diweddarach).

       SWYDD UN

Rwyf wedi postio'r swydd hon yn ddiweddar. Darllenwch ac os Angenrheidiol Sylw. Heddwch gyda chi i gyd!

 Angel o Dduw Hollalluog (un ychwanegol daearol) yr ymwelwyd â mi (Neil Leslie Gilbert) yn Eglwys Sant STEPHEN yn Church of England, ST STEPHEN's TERRACE, Llundain SW8 1DH, o dan esgobaeth Southwark Ty'r Drindod, 4 llys Capel, stryd fawr Bwrdeistref, Llundain SE1 1HW. (ar fwy nag un achlysur yn y 1980au. Ar un o angylion Hollalluog Dduw ymweliadau, hebryngais Angel Hollalluog Dduw i'm Mamau former home fflat 24 LULWORTH HOUSE, DORSET ROAD, naw ELMS, Llundain, SW8 1DR (sef lle'r oeddwn yn byw gyda fy mam a'm brawd). Gwelwyd yr Angel o Almighty Duw yn cyrraedd gan blwyfolion amrywiol a'r Parchedig (ar y pryd/date) Christopher Guinness a ficer Eglwys St Stephens.

 Cerddasom o Eglwys Sant Stephens (St Stephens Terrace) ar hyd Bolney Street i FLAT 24 Tŷ Lulworth (a welwyd gan bobl leol). (Er i ni gerdded i wahanol fannau y byddaf yn eu datgelu ar ddyddiad arall, (gan gynnwys Vauxhall Bridge, lle mae ei Mawrhydi y Frenhines-Elizabeth II/ei Mawrhydi y Frenhines-Elizabeth II # [PALAS BUCKINGHAM, Llundain SW 1W0 Swyddfa ei Mawrhydi y Frenhines] yn siarad i mi (o flaen Angel o Dduw Hollalluog)-gofyn a oeddwn i'n iawn a phynciau eraill.

 Byddaf yn datgelu mwy am fy ngornest ag Angel o Hollalluog Dduw dro arall, ond pan edrychodd Angel o Dduw Hollalluog a minnau a siarad â'n gilydd, llwyddais i dystio a datgelu bod pensaernïaeth yr Eglwys (bwâu a fframiau ffenestri a manylion eraill) y chur strwythur ch, yn cael ei adeiladu/hadeiladu mewn tebygolrwydd o gael Angel o fwgwd Almighty Duw a nodweddion Anatomi a Anatomeg.

 Felly, gallaf gadarnhau i bawb, hynny drwy dystio Angel o Dduw Hollalluog a thrwy drefniant Angel of Almighty Gods o-fynd â mi drwy gwennol/llong i ymweld â Duw Hollalluog (sy'n byw ac yn teyrnasu am byth), y dylai Cristnogion a phob un arall, gredu yn Hollalluog Duw trwy yr hwn yr oedd Emmanuel-Iesu Crist yn un-shunned ni.

 Teimlaf mor anrhydeddus a bendithiol i addoli mewn eglwys yn Lloegr Eglwys yr Eglwys

STRYD FAWR SMITH LONDON SW1P 3AZ neu Eglwys Gatholig (o dan Eglwys Gatholig Lloegr & Wales 39 ECCLESTON SQUARE LONDON SW1V 1BX).

[slanginternet-blog]

TYFAYS Meaning

TYFAYS means “Thank You For All Your Support“. Answer to What does TYFAYS mean is “Thank You For All Your Support”. This Page tells the meaning and definition of Slang word TYFAYS.

What does TYFAYS Mean?

TYFAYS mean “Thank You For All Your Support”. This is the exact meaning of the English Slang word TYFAYS.

TYFAYS Meaning/Definition

The Exact meaning of TYFAYS is “Thank You For All Your…

[haz-daniel]

//rolls away to dinner

[tinybitterasian]

COLLAB: Laughter Lines

pairing: tyler/fay word count: 1214 a/n: kel & i did a collab (she drew everything while i wrote) inspired by this lovely song!! we hope you like it ^^

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.

[hirudinealycher-blog]

What if CoTy was a ship.

[tinybitterasian]

fic: just one yesterday

pairing: tyler/fay word count: 1808 a/n: based on yet another fall out boy song!! i hope u enjoy this kel guessed the WHOLE PLOT right ((rated M for not-really-graphic smut scenes))

i thought of angels choking on their halos get them drunk on rose water see how dirty i can get them pulling out their fragile teeth and clip their tiny wings

anything you say can and will be held against you so only say my name, it will be held against you anything you say can and will be held against you so only say my name

--

Tyler inhaled from his cigarette and coughed out the smoke, sniffling in the stiff, city air as buses and cars and vans and taxis passed the small alley he was holed up in. The night sky loomed over him, threatening to bring an end to his plans of having one last hurrah before he took the remainder of his money out of his bank account to buy a pretzel. He took one disgusted look at the still burning piece of rolled-up paper and threw it to the ground and wiped his hands on his trousers, then looked around and started to walk out of the alley.

“Tyler!” he heard, instantly recognising the voice, and exhaled roughly before turning around and giving a bright smile to JC. “Hey!”

“Hey,” Tyler replied, accepting JC’s half-hug.

“How are you doing?” JC asked.

“Oh, you know,” Tyler waved his hand about nonchalantly. “Homeless, nearly broke, stuff like that.”

“Unemployed?” JC asked, and Tyler nodded. JC nodded curtly before clapping him on the shoulder. “Why don’t you come stay with me and my sis, then?”

“No,” Tyler said, “No, I wouldn’t wanna impose on you. You gave me so much back when I was—No, i wouldn’t—”

“Come on,” JC said, dragging him along the street. “You don’t have to protest. Is this all you’ve got?”

“I’ve got a room in a motel with my bag and stuff, but yeah,” Tyler replied, momentarily defeated, and JC whistled.

“Give me the address, then, we’ll go there and get your stuff together.” JC said, and Tyler sighed.

“Alright.”

--

if heaven’s grief brings hell’s reign then i’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday (i know i’m bad news) for just one yesterday (i saved it all for you) i want to teach you a lesson in the worst kind of way still, i’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday (i know i’m bad news) for just one yesterday (i saved it all for you) for just one yesterday

--

After they went and got Tyler’s stuff, the two of them headed to JC and Coco’s home seven streets from where JC had found him earlier that day.

“You can take that small room there,” JC said, pointing to a makeshift bedroom beside a bathroom. “Sorry about the lack of guest rooms, this other guy, and his name is Fay. He’s kind of our tenant right now, and he actually pays, so.” JC nudged Tyler jokingly and beckoned for Tyler to go put his things down in the bedroom. “You probably won’t be seeing him around a lot. He’s a student most days and part-time librarian on all the others. He’s moving out soon though, so no worries about that.”

“A student?” Tyler smirked, “And a librarian? What is he studying? The course of ‘How to be Extremely Boring?’”

“Medical Science, actually,” a gentle voice called, and Tyler could feel the self-loathing bubble up from his chest. “I don’t think I have to take a course in that field, as JC would put it.”

“I never said you were extremely boring,” JC smiled, and clapped Fay hard on the back. “Fay, meet Tyler. Tyler, meet your new housemate. Fay, find Tyler a job. Tyler, cooperate. Good day.”

With that, JC sauntered out of the house, his keys clinking behind him. Fay raised an eyebrow at his exit before continuing silently on to the kitchen.

“So…” Tyler drawled, catching Fay’s attention midway.

“What can I do for you? Besides find you a job and put up with you?” Fay said, and Tyler winced at his tone.

“We could start off on a fresh page?” Tyler suggested, and Fay’s eyes sharpened.

Tyler wished that he had just kept his mouth shut.

Just as he was about to stick his head out of the window and announce to the whole world that he was a downright dickwad in an attempt to appease Fay, the blue-haired, golden-eyed man averted his gaze and nodded in the direction of Tyler’s new bedroom.

“What?” Tyler said, and Fay met his eyes.

“Yeah.” He said.

“Yeah, we could start off on a fresh page.”

--

letting people down is my thing, baby find yourself a new gig this town ain’t big enough for two of us i don’t have the right name or the right looks but i have twice the heart

anything you say can and will be held against you so only say my  name, it will be held against you anything you say can and will be held against you so only say my name

--

Five minutes later and Fay’s on top of him, kissing the life out of his mouth, and all Tyler could think was what the fuck, and how in the world, and why, and oh god, he’s hot.

“Fresh page?” Tyler murmured between kisses, manoeuvring the two of them toward his new room. “This seems like a whole new book.”

“Ever heard of foreplay?” Fay retorted, lifting Tyler’s shirt up. He placed a warm hand on Tyler’s stomach and kissed his neck, working his way down.

“Ever thought of taking your clothes off?” Tyler said, and shoved Fay back towards the wall as he busied himself with closing the door with his hands behind his back.

“No. I’ve been too busy thinking of you taking yours off,” Fay replied, and Tyler shivered.

“All thinking and no doing,” Tyler whispered, removing Fay’s belt and unzipping his pants. “Sounds like a student to me.”

“Shut up,” Fay said, and took off his shirt. “And kiss me.”

And that’s what Tyler did.

--

if heaven’s grief brings hell’s reign then i’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday (i know i’m bad news) for just one yesterday (i saved it all for you) i want to teach you a lesson in the worst kind of way still, i’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday (i know i’m bad news) for just one yesterday (i saved it all for you) for just one yesterday

--

Fay straddled Tyler’s naked body, one of his palms pressed flat to Tyler’s chest, and he memorised in a split second the way it moved up and down every time Tyler inhaled or exhaled.

“What are you doing?” Tyler asked softly, his hands on Fay’s hips.

“Cataloguing,” Fay replied simply, and bent down to kiss Tyler deeply on the lips. Tyler’s right hand fluttered from Fay’s hip and moved up to cup his waist, and Fay gasped into his hot mouth.

“Are you done cataloguing?” Tyler asked when they broke apart, stroking his side tenderly.

“Not even close,” Fay whispered before sucking a spot on Tyler’s neck. Tyler arched upwards slightly, careful not to move Fay from his current position.

“When will you be done?” Tyler asked. He bit his lip to keep from moaning when Fay licked around his nipple and dug his heels into the fresh-smelling bed sheets.

“Give me a moment,” Fay muttered.

“I’d give you a whole eon,” Tyler replied without meaning to, and Fay stopped in his actions briefly.

“Didn’t pen you down to be the sweet, romantic type,” Fay said, spreading his hands on either side of Tyler’s body.

“Didn’t pen you down to be this fucking hot,” Tyler replied, and Fay grinned widely.

“If you’ve got lube and a condom, I can show you hotter,” Fay whispered, his warm breath ghosting over Tyler’s body, and Tyler’s eyes flicked to his un-opened duffel bag.

“No way,” Fay said, eyes wide, and he laughed, throwing his head back.

Tyler could only shrug as he took in the delightful sight of Fay laughing, unbridled and naked, on top of him.

“Soldiers always come prepared, right?”

--

if i spill my guts the world would never look at you the same way and now i’m here to give you all my love so i can watch your face as i take it all away, away, away

--

Tyler woke up smelling of sex the next morning, his hair matted and messy and his thighs sticky with sweat that was never cleaned.

He yawned and stretched, expecting a lithe body next to – or on top of – him. However, he found nothing at all.

Pulling on a pair of wrinkled pajama bottoms and an old grey top he had taken from his bag, Tyler made his way out. He looked everywhere for Fay, but didn’t find him at all.

“Morning, sex maniac,” Coco greeted him, holding a box of cherry tomatoes and grinning mischievously. “I see you’ve met Fay.”

“Morning, asshat.” Tyler countered. “Yeah, I have. Would you so kindly tell me where he is at the moment?”

“He’s at school,” Coco replied, popping a cherry tomato into her mouth. “He won’t be here all of this week; he’s too busy with finals and work and stuff. He wasn’t here all of last week, either. Yesterday was probably your only chance of seeing him before he moves out at the end of the month.”

Tyler swallowed and nodded, pretending not to care, but Coco caught the shadow of dismay on his face as easily as a wolf might pounce on a defenceless rabbit.

“Cheer up,” Coco said, “I have his number if you want it, and he’s also left you this note. Gave it to me this morning, when he wasn’t smelling of come and sweat.”

She handed him a small card. “He said he had just heard of a job opening and thought it would be perfect for you. I’ve got to hand it to you; I’ve never known him to have such a great sense of humour in my life.”

‘Part-Time Librarian wanted. To start at the end of March. Resume required for walk-ins. Good command of English required.’

Tyler smiled at the card and played with it with his fingers, turning it this way and that.

“Yeah,” Tyler looked at her. “He’s got a great sense of humour all right.”

--

if heaven’s grief brings hell’s reign then i’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday (i know i’m bad news) for just one yesterday (i saved it all for you) i want to teach you a lesson in the worst kind of way still, i’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday (i know i’m bad news) for just one yesterday (i saved it all for you) for just one yesterday

--

[tinybitterasian]

[Tyler/Fay] Fic: Untangle Me

Word Count: 9656 Warning(s): (Temporary) Major Character Death, Minor Character Death Summary: A robot made of thread, a robot of mass destruction, and a scientist who wants it on his side. When they meet, however, the scientist finds out something about the robot he had never thought of before. What is this robot, and why can't he pull away from it?

(notes at the end!) 

----

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 

+BONUS: there’s a poem that goes with it too, & it’s here ^^

[tinybitterasian]

fic: setting fire to the sky (like a phoenix)

pairing: tyler/fay word count: 1339 summary: dance alone to the beat of your heart a/n: based on this song which is the best battle song ever i hope u like this wee

--

It has always been the survival of the fittest.

Art begs to differ, and the Fox and the Hound sprouts from the ground as a hunting dog bites through the neck of a feral fox half its size, and the beautiful Starry Starry Night is drawn as many people die beneath it.

But at its core, this world is all about picking and choosing the better ones, and weeding out the rest.

For what good are they?

--

He stalks his target in the dark of the night, stealing away to the temporary safety the shadows offer as he draws his bow. He locks in his target and breathes evenly, then lets loose his arrow.

A thin sound is heard in the air; a slight, recognizable sound, and the target turns around – a fatal mistake – and pays the price for it. The target drops ungracefully to the ground, his body hitting the floor, collecting in a lump of dead limbs and heavy veins, and Tyler smiles.

Job well done, he tells himself.

Job well done.

--

As this is happening, a painter paints out the scene from two blocks away, but hides the true scene beneath flowery metaphors and bright colours, lit painfully ironically beneath harsh overhead lights. Fay picks up his brush, dips it in water, then in paint, and finally pats it on the scrap paper he’s holding in his hand methodically before stroking a line across his canvas. He’s painting Tyler’s look of concentration as he hones in on his kill, except in the painting it’s a man eyeing a piece of jewellery from outside the shop’s window, only visible in the painting from the reflection in the window.

Fay raises his arms and lets his long, overly huge sleeves droop over his elbows, and considers giving Tyler’s character green eyes for once.

He drops his current brush and picks up a smaller, more precise one, before letting its bristles hit blue.

And he continues to paint.

--

Tyler looks indifferently at the television as it blasts news of the new victim, a forty-seven-year-old man who had owned a lucrative business that had used illegal child labour to facilitate its production of coffee beans, and holds out his plate to Fay, who plops another pancake on it.

“You killed him well,” Fay says, just as easily as if they had been talking about the weather, and Tyler sighs, mouth full of fluffy pancakes.

“I could’ve done it so much better,” Tyler mumbles, and swallows.

“Just wait for your next one; you’ll get to do whatever you want with it.” Fay murmurs, and touches the back of Tyler’s neck gently. “Like a painter.”

“Like a painter,” Tyler repeats, and cranes his neck upwards to receive a kiss from Fay.

Hours later, Fay stretches his arms out, and begins to paint.

--

People say that cats can never be domesticated, that they’ll always have a scrap of their feral nature left in them. They say this because they’ve seen a cat attack a bird, an injured pigeon, probably, or they’ve seen a cat stalk a rat down a dark alley, its eyes dilating to their maximum, both its irises eclipsed by the pupils’ darkness.

People don’t say that humans are wild or domesticated, because the idea is absurd. After all, have they ever seen a feral human? A human on all fours, sniffing at trees and growling at foreign animals?

But maybe they’re looking at all the wrong things. Maybe a human’s feral nature is different from any other animal’s, different from a cat’s.

Maybe what they’re supposed to be looking for is this –

– a human crouching on two hind legs, eyes glistening in the dim light, one arm pulled straight in front, one arm pulled back, chin lifted high above the glare of the street lights. A human whose breathing doesn’t change when a kill is made; a human who smiles instead.

Tyler stands up and stretches, yawning in the process. He keeps his eyes open, and sees the target fall like a piece of tissue to the ground.

He can only spare a second more to admire his handiwork before retreating back to the warm home a street away, where a painter is waiting with his brush.

--

Fay carves a sculpture into his drawing, softening the shadows around it as he paints on the stale, cold marble eyes, and breathes on his brush before setting it down.

“What do you think?” He asks, standing back and putting his hands on his hips.

“It’s amazing,” Tyler replies, cocking his head to take a better look. “That’s me.”

“All of my paintings are you,” Fay says, smiling. “And all of yours are me.”

“Not all of them,” Tyler retorts, “And it isn’t like I want you dead or anything—”

“I know,” Fay says, amused. “I mean it the other way round. I’m an artist, remember? The beating around the bush and all, it comes with the profession.”

Tyler laughs and nods. He walks the two steps between him and Fay and engulfs him in a hug.

“Where would I be without you?” he asks, not sincerely, and he can hear Fay’s laugh on his chest.

“Looking for another target instead of being here, hugging me.” Fay replies, and Tyler has to swallow to keep from telling him how true that is.

--

They both knew that their time had to run out one day.

A painter and a serial killer with a bow, residing in the same neighbourhood where numerous people had been killed?

They both knew that their time had to come one day, and they were prepared.

They weren’t going to run, not like water rushing out from a stream into the sea, not like other civilians fleeing a town when a bomb signal has been sounded, no.

They were going to stay, and though they knew they couldn’t win, they were romantics, and that little scrap of hope fuelled them through their apolaustic life.

Only when the sirens blasted and the helicopter barged down did they go.

--

“They’re coming for you,” Coco had told them a day earlier. “Just wanted to let you know.”

“We’ve known since we’ve moved in together,” Fay had said simply, shoving a cherry tomato into his mouth. “But thanks for looking out for us.”

“I can get you out.” Coco had offered, but Fay and Tyler had shaken their heads.

“It’s time for us to put on our war paint.”

--

the war is won before it’s begun release the doves surrender love

--

Fay has his paints and palettes in a small artist’s bag, worn and old and black, and Tyler has his bow slung over his shoulder and back.

They’re sitting on their couch, popping corn chips into their mouths and awaiting their deaths like it was the most natural thing in the world.

When the door caves in from the people on the outside, Fay’s standing behind it, and paint bursts forth from the door onto the men on the other side, covering their black uniforms with blue and red and yellow and green, and Fay’s last thought before they shoot him in the head is that they look wonderful, just like all his other works of art.

Tyler’s on the window-sill, perched like a falcon, and he takes down the painted-over people before he allows himself to feel the bullet burrowing through his skin, and he plummets down the building to the unrelenting concrete sidewalk.

They recover their bodies soon after, their bloodied arms hanging out of the body bags as they’re loaded into the back of the van, untouched from their last position, and they notice that Fay’s hand is wrapped tightly around a small paint brush.

“It’s all just a painting,” an agent mutters, and the rest of the elites shiver in fear.

They zip up the body bags without removing the brush, and Tyler and Fay’s bodies end up in darkness for the last time.

Just a painting.

--

[tinybitterasian]

fic: and now it's (much) too late

pairing: tyler/fay word count: 1890 a/n: a kind of reverse chronology fic based on this song!! it's my first one so i hope you like it ^^ (also this was written partially because dear kel said that she "likes sad things" i never forget kel)

--

NOW

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Tyler says, his heart breaking into pieces but his face breaking into a smile. He raises his glass of champagne. “To Fay and Nathan.”

“To Fay and Nathan,” Fay echoes, and clinks his glass of champagne with Tyler’s and sips. “Thank you for coming. I didn’t—”

“I hope you don’t mind,” Tyler interrupts, putting a hand out, still smiling (still breaking). “I prepared a small toast for you and Nathan. Would it be okay if I…?”

“Of course,” Fay says too quickly, and Tyler’s heart thuds and thuds, and he wants to shut it up because he knows what pain feels like, thank you very much, he doesn’t need to be reminded in any way. “After Gale’s speech, the floor’s all yours.”

“Thanks, Fay.” Tyler replies. Smiling smiling smiling. “To the two of you.” He raises his glass again, and finishes it off. “I’m gonna get a refill on this. Delicious stuff. See you later, groom.”

“See you later,” he hears as he walks past Fay. It’s small and whispered, but he hears it, and his heart grows back and shatters again, over and over.

It seems like that’s all it ever does these days.

--

TWO MONTHS AGO

Tyler picks up the vanilla envelope. It smells of paper and nothing else, but the handwriting on it looks and feels like home and wishes and lost times and memories, and—

Don’t think so much, he tells himself, just open the bloody envelope.

He opens it, knowing full well what’s going to be inside, and lo and behold:

Fayren Raye & Nathan Bronsky cordially invite you to their wedding on 08.12.2020 at the Grand Ballroom, Level 4 at the South Island Country Club

He skims over the rest of the card, biting his lip as he does, and sets it back down on the table carefully.

He walks into his room and sifts through his wardrobe, pretending to be genuinely interested in looking for a suitable suit to wear to Fay’s upcoming wedding, but finds nothing.

Instead, an hour later, he sits on his bed, his sheets tangled and messed up around him as he clutches at his favourite tie and sobs into his hands.

It’s another half hour before he stops crying, and he wipes away at his tears angrily with the back of his hand. It’s been six years.

Six years.

He thinks it’s pathetic that he’s not over it yet, since they had only been in a relationship for a little less than three. Sure, they were best friends since Tyler was twelve and Fay was ten, but then Tyler had screwed that up by asking for more, and now they are just friends.

Still, he wishes that they were less than nothing, because then he wouldn’t have gotten this wedding invitation from Fay. He wishes that they hadn’t kept in contact after the break-up, wishes that they don’t meet up every second Thursday of the month to keep up with one another.

But he also wishes that they had kept in contact more – wishes that Fay had asked him to be his best man instead (he was the obvious choice, of course, but then Fay had gone and chosen Gale to be his best man – Gale, his friend of less than two years, instead of Tyler, who had been there his entire life).

The more Tyler looks at the envelope, the elegant invitation, the more he wants to scream and tear out his hair and throw up. He wants to reach for his vodka bottle and down it, wants to end it all by poisoning himself from the inside out, but he doesn’t do that.

Because he’s not that selfish.

So Tyler gets up from his bed, washes his face, and chucks the ruined tie into the trash can. He takes a car ride down to a tailor Fay had mentioned in passing once and asks to be fitted for a suit suitable for Fay’s wedding.

He doesn’t look back.

--

TWO YEARS AGO

Tyler sees the light shine off of Fay’s new ring before Fay even sees him, and his heart starts to race wildly.

“So—” Fay says as a way of greeting when he finally gets there, but Tyler waves off his sentence.

“Congratulations,” Tyler says instead, gesturing to Fay’s left hand, and Fay blushes brilliantly, spots of light pink sitting high on his cheeks.

“Thank you,” Fay replies, and Tyler can feel him searching his face for a response.

“I’m glad for you,” Tyler lies, and smiles.

He turns to the bartender, calling out, “Two glasses of champagne, Edward!”

“Coming right up!” the bartender calls back, and Tyler turns to face Fay.

“I really am glad for you,” Tyler says to Fay, who’s looking bashful and nervous and all kinds of adorable. “I really am.”

“Thank you,” Fay repeats, and smiles nervously. “Are you—? Okay with this?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Tyler says too quickly, too defensively, and Fay’s eyes flicker down to the bar top. “I’m just—I’m happy that you’re happy.” He ends flatly, unconvincingly, but Fay takes it.

“Thank you, Tyler,” he says sincerely, and smiles. “I’m glad you’re on board with this.”

“All I want is for you to be happy,” Tyler says softly two glasses of champagne and four shots of whiskey later to an empty bar, and his heart breaks and breaks and breaks.

--

FOUR YEARS AGO

“I met a guy,” Fay tells Tyler on one of their Thursday night meetings, and Tyler tries not to visibly cringe. “His name’s Nathan. He’s really great, and I—I’m going for dinner with him on Saturday night.”

Tyler nods, understanding.

“I’m happy for you,” Tyler smiles (and this is when it starts to break). He raises his manhattan and gives a little dip of his head. “To Fay and guy named Nathan!”

Fay smiles a small smile and raises his martini.

“To me and guy named Nathan,” he repeats, and downs his drink. “Don’t count on it to work out, though. He’s a real lightweight when it comes to drinking.”

“Two peas in a pod,” Tyler murmurs, and Fay laughs lightly at that.

A few years ago, Fay would’ve rolled his eyes and punched me in the arm jokingly, Tyler suddenly thinks, and he swallows the saliva in his mouth, unwittingly remembering something Fay had said long ago about amylase and bolus and starch, and coughs into his hand.

“I think I’m gonna call it a night,” Tyler says, and finishes his manhattan. “I’ll see you next month? Let me know how it went with guy named Nathan?”

Fay nods, and waves him goodbye.

And when Fay tells him that he and Nathan are now dating a month later, all Tyler can do is bite his lip and smile through his heartbreak and wish him well.

--

SIX YEARS AGO

“You were my best friend,” Fay whispers, caressing Tyler’s tear-stained cheek. “You used to—spend time with me, used to hold my hand, and—”

“Fay,” Tyler says softly, but Fay’s having none of that.

“—you used to love me.”

“I still love you,” Tyler says brokenly, and Fay shakes his head. “I’m still the same guy.”

“No,” Fay replies, and presses a soft kiss to Tyler’s cheek. He lets his hand drop and looks toward the floor. “I know you love me.”

“Then why—”

“Tyler,” Fay says, his own tears threatening to spill. “You don’t care about this anymore.”

Tyler drops his head in shame.

It’s true – he’s been neglecting their relationship, been neglecting Fay for his sports and his friends and his own, selfish, selfish desires.

“I’m sorry,” Tyler says lamely, and bites his lip. “I tried, so hard, I don’t want to lose you, and I’m sorry so much, and—”

“Tyler,” Fay whispers, “Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. Look at me. Tyler—don’t apologise.” He lifts Tyler’s chin up with his finger, and Tyler can see tears running down his face. “I know. And you’re not gonna lose me. You’re never gonna lose me.”

“I’m sorry—” Tyler tries again, but then Fay’s mouth is on his, and he’s sobbing into the kiss. He squeezes his eyes shut and rests his head on Fay’s shoulder, which immediately goes stiff.

“Don’t apologise to me,” Fay whispers into his ear, and Tyler shakes with another sob. “I love you, but this isn’t going to—it isn’t going to work out, and you know that.”

“I do.” Fay hears from the mess on his chest, and Tyler lifts his head up.

Fay kisses him softly again, and Tyler can taste the tears on his lips when Fay’s lips touch his, can taste the salty this is goodbye, the searing we’ll never be the same again, and he closes his eyes, because he doesn’t want to see the inevitable farewell.

“Goodbye, Tyler,” he hears, and then footsteps, and he knows Fay’s gone the moment the door clicks shut.

That’s when he lets himself break down fully, coming undone on the wooden floor of what was once their flat, in what was once their room.

He doesn’t see Fay for another six months.

--

ONE HOUR LATER

Fay will walk up the aisle, will kiss Nathan and will say his vows. He will look into those grey eyes and tear up, he will see his future and he will say “I do” and hold Nathan’s hand, will dance the first dance with him to their song and will be whisked away by other friends and family.

The best man, Gale-not-Tyler, will say his toast and will make several people in the crowd tear up, but Tyler will remain stoic and injured, like a wounded soldier at the funeral of his comrade, and Tyler will stand up after that, and give his toast.

Tyler will not mention their past relationship, for which Fay will be glad for. Tyler will, instead, talk about his best friend, not his lover; Tyler will talk about that time they were at the bar, and when Fay had told him about Nathan for the first time. Tyler will not talk about that time when Tyler was thirteen and Fay was eleven and they were screaming while rolling down a hill. He will, instead, talk about the time Fay showed off his engagement ring to their little circle of friends.

At the end of his three minute toast, he will receive applause, and Fay will stand up from his table and engulf Tyler in a hug, and Tyler will hold on for one second too long, and Fay will let go and look at him and know.

Then, Tyler will politely excuse himself from the ceremony and slip out, and Fay will not notice him gone until the end of the night, but that’s not his fault.

No, Tyler will think as he revs up his car’s engine and pulls up the hand brake.

It’s not his fault at all.

--

i hope he buys you flowers i hope he holds your hand gives you all his hours when he has the chance

take you to every party cause i remember how much you loved to dance do all the things i should’ve done when i was your man

do all the things i should’ve done when i was your man

[tinybitterasian]

fic: frangible (in your hands)

pairing: tyler/fay word count: 2076 a/n: this is an asylum!au that i kinda decided to do when i went out with kel the other day hohoho i get the best ideas when kel's around i wonder why hmmm anyway i hope you enjoy this!! (:

--

He remembers when they took him.

He was seventeen, and his mother had died two years before, but he hadn’t stopped seeing her.

“Mommy,” he had said when he was sixteen, holding up his test to his mother as the house maid had dropped her broom and stared in shock. “Look, mommy, I got full marks.”

They took him soon after, right after his seventeenth birthday, and he never saw her the same way again. He remembers screaming, shouting to her and asking her to help him, to save him from their cold hands, but she simply stared blankly at his face.

He remembers that the moment he got put into his room in the asylum, the very first caretaker that they had assigned to him had left in six months, not being able to handle how frequent and how disastrous Fay’s outbursts were.

He had seen her everywhere – in the corner of his small room, in the shower behind him as he lathered up with the foul smelling soap, and in the canteen as he ate alone.

Then he had seen her less frequently, and now he’s twenty, and he hasn’t seen her for three weeks.

He hears them talk about letting him out soon as he’s getting better. He knows that when they say “let him out” they mean “let him live alone, but visit him every week”. He knows when they say “he’s getting better” they mean “he hasn’t had an attack in ages, he must be making progress”, because that’s how people are. They think someone’s doing well because they don’t see the thing that’s plaguing them, they think they’re doing better because they don’t face the traumatising fear and horror and pain others have to go through.

They believe foolishly that someone is doing better, oh, so much better, because they seem strong and not weak; but they forget too often that even if something is strong, it can be fragile.

Brittle, Fay thinks, is what he should be called.

Brittle.

--

He isn’t surprised when the next caretaker leaves after a year she’s been around – he’s been good, but he’s also been painfully boring, and he knows from the knowledge he’d acquired after entering the asylum that being a caretaker doesn’t pay well for the hours that they have to work.

He is surprised, though, when he sees his next caretaker come in. This is the first time since his first caretaker that he’d been assigned with a male, and Fay’s eyes roam over him as he comes in.

“Mr. Raye?” the man asks, all ginger hair and smile, “Is that right?”

“Yes,” Fay replies.

“Mr. Tyler Reynolds,” the man says, and sticks out a hand to Fay. “I’ll be your new caretaker from now on. Oh, and you can call me Tyler.”

Fay shakes his hand limply, not bothering to put any effort into the act. However, Tyler doesn’t seem daunted by this, and he smiles brightly at Fay.

Just his luck that he got a friendly one.

“So, you probably already know the protocol,” Tyler says, and Fay nods stiffly. He wishes that this new man would just go away and leave him be. “If you need me, just call me up. I have no other duties here, so I’m available around the clock.”

Fay looks at him and blinks once, then twice, as if he were an unimpressed cat, but Tyler’s smile doesn’t falter.

“I hope we can be friends,” Tyler says, and Fay’s filled with sudden curiousity. Who is this man, and why does he want to befriend me?

This is the first time anyone’s ever wanted to be my friend, Fay thinks forlornly. Too bad he’s too late, and I’m too uninterested.

“I’ll see you at dinner time, then.” Tyler says to fill the silence, and Fay’s eyes widen. “I’ll be here to bring you to the canteen at six, alright?”

“Okay,” Fay says, and he swears that Tyler’s green eyes sparkle.

“See you.” Tyler waves goodbye as he leaves, and Fay wants to wave back, but his hand isn’t responding to him, so instead he gives Tyler a small half-smile.

Later, when they’re having dinner, Fay tells Tyler to call him “Fay” and not “Mr. Raye” or “Fayren”, and Tyler grins and grins and grins.

--

Over time, Fay begins to realise that Tyler is the nicest person he’s ever met, other than his mother, and his brain starts to unwind him.

He’s not real.

Thoughts will blunder into his head midday and short-circuit him, will shock him into a state of non-being, and he will breathe rapidly while feeling like he’s not breathing at all, and Tyler will ask him if everything’s okay.

He’s not real.

He’ll reply, albeit shakily, that he’s fine, but Tyler will furrow his eyebrows, and Fay knows that he’ll end up recording these incidents on his chart which he has to give to the psychiatrists at the asylum, and he knows that once the psychiatrists see his chart, they won’t let him go.

He’s not real.

Then again, they might be right in not letting him go. After all, his mother was the only person he had ever loved and opened up to besides Tyler, and she was just a product of his own mind at the end, wasn’t she?

He’s not real.

Sure, he had constructed her from his memories, and he had been with her before, but what if he had seen Tyler – or someone that had looked like Tyler, at the very least – before, and what if his brain had decided to just mash together this Tyler?

He’s not real.

Fay’s mind is going crazy, the gears in his head turning too fast for him to keep up with, overheating his core, his mind yelling at him to stop, stop, stop, while his heart races ahead.

He’s not real.

No.

“Fay?” Tyler asks cautiously, inching his way into the room, as if he were approaching a wild animal. “Are you okay?”

He’s not real. He’s not real. He’s not real.

Fay can feel his head going into overdrive, can hear the hum of his blood as it rushes to his ears and his head as he breathes, stops breathing, and breathes again.

“Sweetheart,” he hears his mom say, and his eyes widen in fear.

No.

“Sweetheart,” he hears her say again, and he clamps his eyes shut and covers his ears with his hands.

“Sweetheart,” she whispers, and he can feel her coming closer, and he’s screaming; he knows he’s screaming, but he doesn’t know what he’s screaming. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

No.

“Fay,” Tyler says worriedly, and he presses a button on the wall as he approaches Fay and wraps his arms around him. “Fay. Come back, come back—”

She’s not real.

Not anymore.

Fay shouts when he feels hands touch him and tries to struggle out of the strong arms.

 No.

“Sweetheart,” the voice is soothing, calm, like a still pond on a cloudy day. “Come back to me, sweetheart. We can fix this together. We always do, don’t we?”

“Fay,” Tyler says, but Fay can’t hear him anymore. Tyler’s having trouble containing Fay, and he hopes that help is close. “Fay.”

They’re not real.

Fay screams and he feels his head throb, and he knows what that means. He manages a sob, and soon enough, he feels his mind go blank.

“Fay—”

He’s not real.

No.

--

Fay steps out into the chilly morning air and puts his hands in his jacket’s pockets.

It’s been four years since he’s last seen Tyler, and two years since he’s been let out of the asylum. After his horrid attack, they had sacked Tyler and hadn’t said anything else about him, avoiding the issue altogether. Now, Fay doesn’t know if Tyler is truly real or not.

He’s made no friends but has made several acquaintances, and he’s even recently been thinking of getting a pet. A hamster, maybe, because the commitment level is low, and he wouldn’t get that attached to it.

He’s afraid of getting attached to something, or someone, and he doesn’t want to take the plunge, because what if?

In his head, Fay ponders the possibility of the existence of Tyler. He does this often, and though it’s been four years since he’s seen him, his relationship with Tyler was (is still) the strongest and closest relationship he’s ever been in, and Fay had decided early on that he’ll never get over it.

Maybe it’s for the best, he thinks, because then he’d never have the incentive to go back and get attached to someone ever again. Because if he did, then they’d lock him up, and this time, they wouldn’t let him go.

Not even if he was the best patient in the world.

Fay’s trudging through the grass when he hears someone shout, and he instinctively turns towards the noise.

“Hey!” he hears, “Get off that grass! You’re not supposed to—”

The voice stops when it nears, and Fay squints his eyes to see who it belongs to, when—

“Fay,” the voice says breathily, and Fay backs up.

How does he know my name?

“Fay,” the voice repeats, and it’s a man, and Fay can see him coming closer, a beanie covering his head and a thick jacket covering his body. “Fay, is that right?”

Fay’s eyes widen in recognition and he gasps, hand clutching his arm as he backs away, away, away from the apparition in front of him.

“No, Fay—” Tyler starts, then curses when Fay begins to run. He considers letting Fay go, but then he remembers what had happened to himself when he let Fay go the first time, and starts to run after Fay.

“Fay!” Tyler shouts when he nears Fay, and when he sees horrified gold eyes turn towards him, his heart stops. “It’s me—It’s Tyler. I swear. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re not real.” Fay says shakily, his hands trembling where they grip his jacket sleeves. “You’re not real.”

“What? No. I’m real. I’m really real.” Tyler says, covering Fay’s hands with his own. “Fay? Are you okay?”

Fay?

Are you okay?

“You’re. Not. Real.” Fay grits out, tears leaking from his eyes as he fights against Tyler’s hold.

“I’m real,” Tyler says assuringly, “I’m definitely real. Look at me. Fay—come back here, and look at me.”

Fay.

Fay.

Come back,

come back—

“No,” Fay says, his voice losing fight. “You’re not real—”

“Why do you think I’m not real?” Tyler asks exasperatedly. “Why? What reason have I ever given you—”

“Everyone I love,” Fay says, his voice trembling, “Everyone I love isn’t real. My mom is dead, but I saw her, and I loved her, and she wasn’t real. Therefore you’re not real too.”

He sees Tyler swallow and clench his fist, as if he were fighting an emotion and not a mentally ill person, and Fay closes his eyes.

“I’m real,” Tyler repeats, keeping his grip on Fay firm. Fay opens his eyes. “I promise you, to the moon and back, that I’m real.”

“Prove it to me,” Fay snarls, and makes to turn away, when Tyler grabs him into his arms and hugs him tightly, making him gasp and flail.

“I’m real,” Tyler says again into Fay’s shoulder, and Fay stills after a while. He starts to sob, but this time there’s no throbbing in his head, and he thinks that he’ll be okay. “I’m real.”

“Fay,” Tyler breathes, “Fay.”

Fay.

Fay.

Fay buries his head into Tyler’s chest and his breath breaks on a sob.

“I’m real,” Tyler whispers, and Fay sobs harder. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

Fay nods, his mind calming as Tyler whispers calm, comforting words in his ears, and when Tyler loosens his hold on Fay, he wipes his tears and looks up at Tyler, who’s looking at him like he’s everything that’s good in the world.

“I’m not a figment of your imagination,” Tyler says, “I’m not. You’re allowed to be loved, and I’m going to show you that you don’t have to be afraid of what you’re capable of.”

And for the first time in his life, after years and years of breaking and unwinding and falling, Fay starts to feel his heart and mind align, and he allows himself to trust Tyler, just that little bit.

For Tyler, that’s more than enough.

-- 

[tinybitterasian]

fic: how the mighty fall (in love)

pairing: tyler/fay word count: 1565 summary: fay is an android with some human in him, and tyler is a human with no android in him. a/n: inspired by kel's robot/mechanic au!! i think i might do more of these but i'm not even sure... it's not really done is it laughs nervously i hope you like it!!

--

Year 2781

Androids walk the Earth as surely as humans do, and walk it better than robots do.

They are able to shower without getting short-circuited, able to put a full set of make-up on their faces in less than a few seconds, able to lift a car to save a dog with little effort. In short, they’re super-powered humans with an expiration date stamped on them.

The humans who are still alive (a billion of them, give or take a few hundred thousand) still run the world, of course, because they’re the only ones who have the ambition to. They’re looked after by a host of androids, all highly skilled and built for a specific reason. Towns where the first android building facilities sprouted centuries ago are flourishing now. Androids run those towns, taking over menial labour jobs without complaint. It was what they were built for, anyway.

Then came a peculiar scientist, peculiar because he wasn’t really a scientist – he was trained as an engineer – who tried to invent the world’s first android that can feel and respond to things the ways a human would. He intended to come up with an android that could love animals, could feel a sense of empathy, could cry, even.

A group of humans shut him down before he could finish programming the last set of senses into his android. He was sentenced to a lifetime imprisonment in the most secure prison in Azerbaijan without being told why, and his research was all thrown away.

The only thing they couldn’t find when they looked through his lab was the android, but they let that go when they realised it wasn’t even completed.

“An android can last maybe two, three hundred years?” one of them said, shrugging. “It won’t be any trouble. We could just let it live out its lifespan.”

They reached an unanimous decision to let the android roam and never once tried to find it after that, and the scientist never saw his creation again.

On the other side of the Atlantic ocean stood that very android, having been shipped to America previously to test run a few stunts before his brain was rewired by the destruction of the main computer system back in England. He lost power for two seconds and crashed to the ground. When he woke up, his gold eyes focused on a label on his wrist.

‘PROTOTYPE 0001 NAME: FAYREN_R EXP: APRIL 19 3052 PURPOSE: -’

He squinted his eyes at the dash beside ‘Purpose’ and shook his arm, as if doing that would result in a profession appearing in black on his pale wrist. He soon realised that nothing was going to change the fact that he had no purpose, and sighed.

Once he stopped being confused of his surroundings (he had a built-in GPS, as did all androids), he stood up only to realise that his left leg was smashed from the knee down. He had felt nothing beforehand – just a slight tinge of pain. He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, but knew instinctively that he must have landed on his left shin when he fell.

Using his built-in GPS, he located a small mechanic shop nearby, and set off in that direction. He hobbled and limped without wincing like a human would, but slower than a normal android would as he was curious about where he was.

When he got to the mechanic shop, he pushed open the door and little silver bells clinked together.

“Be out in a minute!” he heard, and Fayren leaned against the door, waiting for the mechanic to come out.

“Hi,” the mechanic said when he walked out, ginger hair spilling over his tanned forehead. “D’you need help with your leg? Oh, wait, you’re an android. You probably don’t even know what I’m—”

“Tyler Reynolds,” Fayren said after his mind did a swipe on the databases. “Yes. I do need help. What do I have to do.”

“You can understand me?” Tyler said puzzledly. “Well. They must’ve gotten a new model out, then. Can you hobble over here for me?”

“I’m the only one.” Fayren replied, and limped his way to Tyler. Once he reached Tyler, he faintly felt Tyler’s arm around his waist, and Tyler helped him into one of the rooms at the back.

“You’re the only one?” Tyler asked, reading Fayren’s label. “Fayren R. Say, why don’t you give yourself a last name? I’ve never met any android with a proper name like yours.”

“My creator did it. He thought it would make me more human.” Fayren explained. “My creator was Geoffrey Applesbart, and he was arrested by—”

“Geoffrey Applesbart? No way,” Tyler said, fiddling with a laser. “He was the one who got arrested trying to make androids into proper humans, right? A lot of people thought – think, I guess – that if he had succeeded, the entire human race would’ve been wiped out.”

“Theoretically, that would have happened anyway.” Fayren droned out. “You don’t have the right kind of alloy for my leg.”

“I don’t,” Tyler agreed, and grabbed a half-complete leg from a lighted shelf above his head. “This’ll have to do for now. I’ll finish this and patch you right up.”

Fayren waited and watched as Tyler welded parts together and arranged thin filaments into the right positions. He saved what he saw in a file in his head, just to use as reference the next time he got injured.

“There,” Tyler said after exactly fourteen minutes. “All I have to do is to attach it.”

Tyler carefully removed Fayren’s broken leg, and a small bolt of pain shot its way up Fayren’s metallic nervous system which caused him to wince.

“You felt that?” Tyler said, his voice one of awe and curiousity.

“My creator built in a nervous system.” Fayren said. “But it’s not very good. I have seen people fall and cry; when I fall I don’t feel the need to cry at all.”

“You can cry?” Tyler’s eyes lit up, and he started to re-attach Fayren’s leg.

“I can cry if I am sad, or happy, or in too much pain, or angry.” Fayren said monotonously. “My creator programmed feelings and emotions into me, but not all of them.”

“I can tell. Your speech is still a little stunted.” Tyler murmured. He gave Fayren’s new leg a shake and seemed satisfied when it didn’t all fall out. “I’ll get my guy in England to send me a few parts. They only make your alloy there. What’s your skin tone? L02? L03?”

“L02.” Fayren answered. “Hue 0043, matte. The most natural kind.”

“Got it.” Tyler replied. “I’m going to need your—”

“76.2 centimetres, or 30 inches, long. Ankles are 4.58cm or 1.8 inches in diameter, knees are 10.16cm or 4 inches in diameter.” Fayren said automatically.

“Alright then,” Tyler said, and wrote it down on a piece of paper.

“You still use those.” Fayren said, looking at the pen Tyler was holding.

“Hey, what can I say? I’m a sucker for classics.” Tyler smiled, and put the pen down. “Come on, let me take you home. I have a hovercar I’ve been dying to take for a spin.”

“I don’t have a home.” Fayren said simply, and Tyler stopped on his way to the door.

“Well,” Tyler tilted his head. “You could stay at mine, but it’s a bit crampy.”

“All humans are entitled to no less than 5000 square feet of living area.” Fayren said, and gave Tyler what he believed was a ‘stink eye’.

“You even do faces. That’s cute,” Tyler laughed, “Okay, okay, you got me. I’ve got a dog though, so.”

“I know where you live.” Fayren said. “It looks nice. Your dog is lying in the sun now.”

“Alright, alright, stop spying on me. You androids have no regard for privacy.” Tyler scoffed, and grabbed a black rectangle from the reception desk of the mechanic shop.

“I’m the only one,” Fayren said playfully, and Tyler did a double-take.

“Wow,” Tyler said, looking Fayren up and down. “You sure are a piece.”

Fayren felt a flutter in his chest and his brain came up with the word ‘attraction’, and he could feel his cheeks blushing.

“I consist of more than one thousand two hundred pieces,” Fayren said instead, and Tyler laughed. “Now can we please go there. I have to recharge in one hour and it is going to take us forty eight minutes to get to your house.”

“Alright,” Tyler said, and gestured for Fay to exit after him. “Fay.”

“My name is Fayren.” Fayren stated, and he heard Tyler lock the shop after him, punching in complicated numbers and shapes into a device that sank back into the wall after he was done.  

“C’mon then, Fay.” Tyler smirked. The moment he neared his hovercar, the specific heat detecting sensors on them popped the doors open and allowed them in.

“29 Juniper Avenue, California.” Tyler said into a slit positioned where the steering wheel would have been positioned centuries ago, and the engine started.

“Nice to have you with us, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Nice to have you too, P92.” Tyler responded, and they cruised onto the roads.

Fay looked at Tyler for a moment before looking out of the window. He searched back into his memories and saved all those he had experienced that day.

And deleted the rest.