letting go would be a kind of murder
It’s been two months, 27 days, 16 hours, and 11 minutes since Joey went missing.
Not that Tyler is counting or anything.
He turns over in bed restlessly, watching his alarm clock slowly click through numbers, the light dimmed to supposedly help him sleep. Outside his window, the city is filled with the normal sounds of an urban night: a street sweeper a couple neighborhoods over, loud cars gunning down the roads, crickets chirping sleepily in the California autumn’s warmth. Is Joey out in the city somewhere? Is he sleeping right now? Is he awake? Is he thinking of Tyler?
Tyler can’t stop thinking of him. The last time they talked, especially. Everything had seemed so normal. Joey had laughed like he usually did, full of his usual vigor and sass, kissing him goodbye after a day spent wandering through one of the local street fairs, looking for any stall selling the shiny crystals that Joey had a weakness for. Tyler used to tease him about it, and about the money he spent on it. They had stopped for lunch at the food carts set up at the edge of the fair, then drove back to Tyler’s house so Joey could shower. Then Joey had left to go do his own business, giving Tyler his goodbye kiss on the corner of the mouth, and Tyler had watched him walk down the front path and climb into his car.
Tyler’s gone over it a million times in his head. He went over it a million times with the police, too, and a million other days with Joey, laying his life bare for the cops to comb through and examine. They thought he might have something to do with the disappearance, because of course they did – what’s that statistic, most murders are committed by the victim’s romantic partner? Tyler vaguely remembers hearing that somewhere, probably some crime drama that he and Joey half-watched together late at night when they definitely should have been asleep.
Not that it’s a murder. Joey isn’t murdered. Joey is fine. Tyler keeps telling himself that, trying to make himself believe it, but if Joey is alive (which he is) then why hasn’t he come home? Why hasn’t he contacted Tyler? Or his family? Or any of their other friends?
Tyler turns the other way in bed, kicking the blankets away and grabbing the spare pillow to hug it to his chest tightly as he stares at the opposite wall blankly. Joey has to be okay. Joey is probably just…
He’s just…
…Tyler doesn’t know where Joey could be.
Without realizing it, Tyler’s teared up, and he sniffles back tears as he rolls over onto his back and closes his eyes to try to stop himself before he cries himself to sleep for the hundredth time. The first night, falling asleep without Joey next to him and wondering if he’d ever feel that sensation again, was the hardest. But it hasn’t really gotten much easier. Tyler wipes his face roughly with one hand and blinks up at the ceiling. He just needs to sleep. He’s got videos to record tomorrow, a meeting with a friend – life goes on, even though Tyler’s boyfriend has been missing for…
Tyler checks the time again.
…two months, 27 days, 16 hours, and 15 minutes.
Tyler isn’t sure if the fact that he just has to keep going makes this better or worse. At least it gives him something to do. Keeping himself occupied with videos and outreach and charity work prevents his mind from straying too far, wandering into dark corners where he wonders if Joey really is dead, if his body is rotting away in some field somewhere, or if he’s being held against his will, starved or beaten or worse. But Tyler can’t help but feel like his ability to do that work, to get up every day and go sit at his computer or his camera, his ability to meet people for coffee or sit in meetings, is a kind of betrayal of Joey. After all, shouldn’t he be doing more to find him?
Tyler tries not to think like that. Rationally, he knows he’s doing all he can. He’s cooperating with the police, he’s still posting about it online so the headline that nine people are missing doesn’t sink into the oblivion of the internet, he’s putting up missing posters every spare hour of the day. He’s even trying to help set up billboards with the faces of the missing people on them, and Joey’s will be the first to go up.
It doesn’t really matter what Tyler knows rationally, though. He’ll be on the phone with someone – someone normal, someone that doesn’t care about the fact that Tyler’s boyfriend is fucking gone – and he’ll just want to scream. Sometimes he wants to scream so loudly it feels like a physical thing, like something is trapped in his chest and fighting to get out. To use a metaphor of a bird is too delicate, too gentle; it’s more like there’s a tiger trapped inside him, clawing at the prison of his ribcage and trying to leap out of his throat.
Two months, 27 days, 16 hours, and 18 minutes.
He has to keep telling himself that Joey will come back. Or, even if Joey doesn’t come back, Tyler tells himself he’ll see him again someday. Even if he never speaks to Joey again, Tyler just wants to know that he’s alive, that he’s safe, that he’s eating well and getting enough sleep. Tyler would be happy to never see Joey again, if he got to see him just once more.
Then again, Tyler already sees him. It feels like he’s found every tall, blonde man in LA at this point, running to catch up with them, looking like a crazy person as he chases people down in shopping malls and grocery stores because he caught a glimpse of bleached blonde hair and short scruff. Some of them even recognize him, sometimes as Tyler Oakley and sometimes as the guy on the news begging with tears in his eyes for someone to tell him where the love of his life is. But they’re never Joey. They’re James, or Julian, or Johnathan, but never Joey.
Tyler wipes his face again, brushing away the beginnings of tears that threatened to spill over his cheeks. He can’t cry. If he cries, he’ll be crying until 4 AM, and the person that he’s meeting with tomorrow morning won’t be impressed at all if Tyler shows up with a swollen face and red eyes. He curls into his tangled bedding and hugs the pillow tight to his chest.
It’s not the same as Joey. But it’s all he has.
