Through the Shadow of the Evening Sun

“Ty, knock it off, man. You’re shakin’ the whole bench.”

Tearing himself out of his mind, he stills his bouncing knee so quickly that he almost unbalances, halfheartedly shoving Reid and rolling his eyes. He tries hard to keep the flush he can feel spreading throughout his body from his face, absolutely not looking across the table at the others.

The blonde gives him a ‘What?’ look as the conversations around them pick back up but Tyler just shakes his head and picks at the unappetizing food on his plate. Reid shrugs and goes back to trying out lame pick-up lines on Kate while Pogue looks on amused and Tyler tunes out both his voice and the sound of her laughter.

Not that he wants to listen to Caleb and Sarah but for some reason the older boy’s voice is harder to ignore now.

They’d all opted to eat out in the courtyard since it was a pretty mild day for early November but that meant smaller tables and Tyler’d ended up right across from them. He’d been pretty good about avoiding Caleb and had managed to avoid them together totally until now and it was more unsettling than he’d thought it would be.

Caleb is murmuring something in her ear and she laughs and something inside him twists sickly, his knee starting to bounce again under the table with nerves. Reid shoots him a look and he sighs, rubbing his suddenly sweaty palms over his thighs.

Part of him misses the days when there was a more clean-cut division between the four of them, the past few weeks tying them even closer together, tighter knit, because at least then, they’d spent little time all together. For the moment, though, the animosity between Reid and Caleb seems to be on the back burner and they did pretty much everything as a group.

It makes evading Caleb without rousing suspicion that much harder.

He can only take it a few more minutes before he grabs his bag and stands, Reid glancing his way in surprise. “Going on in, I have a couple questions from last night’s homework,” he hedges quietly, scrambling for a believable excuse. He’s relieved when the other boy just nods but then his eyes catch Caleb’s and it’s all he can do to look unaffected.

It doesn’t feel right to hide such a big thing from Reid but there is no way he can talk about it. Even if he did think the blonde could keep it quiet, which he really.. yeah, it wasn’t likely. But even if he did.. he wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Doesn’t understand what’s happening, why just the sight of him with Sarah is enough to make his throat tight. Nothing happened, not really, but it isn’t really even guilt he can feel choking him. Not quite.

And that makes him the most confused of all.

***

Reid’s nowhere to be found after his last class and the last thing he feels like doing is getting stuck talking to Caleb and Pogue, so he slips by them and heads towards his room. There’s the usual mad rush of students and he hears his name a couple times but he keeps his eyes lowered, walking on ahead, feeling safely invisible in the after-school crush.

He’s just feeling even more unsociable than usual, wanting nothing but the peace of their room. More than anything else, he wants things to go back the way they used to be but it was looking more and more impossible with every day that passed, the unspoken words hovering between them until any moment of silence feels stifling and awkward.

There’s a sliver of light under the closed door and he doesn’t know whether to be relieved that Reid was there to keep him from sinking into his increasingly complicated thoughts or to feel upset that he won’t get the peace and quiet he’d been counting on. Shrugging in resignation, he opens the door and lets his bag slip from his shoulder, tossing it into the corner and closing the door.

The tingling along the back of his neck is his first warning and he turns quickly, almost toppling onto his ass as he blinks in shock. Caleb’s sitting on his bed, elbows on his thighs with his hands clasped loosely between his knees, and there’s just so many things wrong with that that he doesn’t know where to start.

“You.. how?” he starts, before realizing that the older boy must have used to get there before him, feeling a twinge of guilt at that. He’d definitely been avoiding him but he hadn’t realized just how important cornering him was to Caleb. Important enough for him to resort to something he did very sparingly, even more so now after that mess with Chase.

Still, he’d known he couldn’t hide from him forever.

“Reid’s out. Some freshman walked by while he was joking with Kate at lunch and thought he was asking her out.” The expression on Caleb’s face leaves little doubt what he thinks of the girl’s intelligence but then, Reid would be the first to say he didn’t date them for their minds.

Tyler gives him his best, ‘And?’ look, not knowing exactly where this was going, and Caleb blows out a frustrated breath.

“We need to talk.”

He swallows. That’s what he’d been afraid of.

Still, he'd known he couldn't hide from him forever.

“You’re breaking up with me already?” he tries to joke, then winces at the unamused look on Caleb’s face. “Sorry, bad joke. But there’s nothing to talk about, Caleb, nothing happened.”

His voice is surprisingly even and logical considering that he’s trembling with nerves inside at being alone with the older boy for the first time since that night.

“Look..” Caleb pauses, raking both hands through his hair. He stands after another moment of silence and acts like he’s going to take a step towards him, but then thinks better of it.

Tyler’s not sure how to feel about that.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I don’t..” he slides a hand over his hair again, messing it up even more. Not that Tyler is paying any particular attention to his hair or remembering how it felt under his own hands.

He blinks when Caleb continues, forcibly tearing his mind away from those fucked up thoughts.

“I don’t know how it happened, or what happened. But you don’t have to avoid me, Tyler. It’s not going to happen again. I am so sorry,” he said quietly, firmly stressing the last few words, dark eyes searching Tyler’s own.

It’s supposed to be a reassurance, he knows that. Caleb seems to think he’s afraid of being molested or something equally messed up and that really couldn’t be further from the truth. He opens his mouth to say just that but there’s this spark of pain inside from those words and he just looks at him helplessly, head spinning.

It’s suddenly so clear.

All the fumbling emotions inside of him, the conflicting thoughts, the flutter of his pulse, tightness of his throat when he was around him. The sick feeling around Sarah. It wasn’t guilt, wasn’t fear or embarrassment.

And those words aren’t reassuring. Not at all.

He doesn’t want to hear that Caleb was sorry it happened, he didn’t want his apologies. He doesn’t want to hear that it would never happen again.

Caleb’s eyes widen when he takes a step towards him, then another, bracing as if he expects him to hit him or something and Tyler can feel his pulse thundering in his ears, a small sane part of him screaming in the back of his mind, asking him what the hell he’s doing. He doesn’t have a clue.

But his hands are sliding into Caleb’s hair and it’s just as good as he remembered, soft and thick, cool on his palms. His body pressed into the older boy’s as he froze, mouth sliding over Caleb’s with a hunger he never realized he had. Especially not for him.

Holding him still, afraid he would pull away, but the other boy seems too stunned to do anything about it.

This time, he’s kissing Caleb.

And since it might very well be the last time he gets to do that, he pours everything he has into it, fingers tightening in his dark hair, tongue teasing along his lips until he can slide it past them, moaning soft in his throat at the hot, velvet brush of Caleb’s tongue against his own. That sound jars the older boy out of it, just like it had before, and there are hands gripping his shoulders, not pushing him away but also keeping him from following as Caleb steps back.

“I’m not sorry,” Tyler tells him, voice husky and low, honest, even as his face flushes hard at what he’d done. Swallowing hard at the dazed and lost look on Caleb’s face, he presses his fingertips to his tingling lips and backs up, needing to get out before the other boy says anything to ruin it.

Caleb’s hands drop, releasing him easily, and something inside aches at that.

“I never was,” Tyler whispers.

With those last words echoing between them, he fumbles behind him for the door handle and opens it, escaping out into the hall with more dignity than he’d thought he’d manage.

Until he realizes that he just escaped from his own room and now has nowhere else to go.