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Tonight I learned that a skull hitting the side of a metal dumpster can sound just like a glass bottle, if it hits hard enough. It caught me off guard; how the same metal clangor you'd hear from a thick beer bottle was offered up by my head.
My head; it was still reeling from the jarring, metallic gong that left a shrill ringing in my ears. The vibrations had shot right out of the dumpster wall and into my brain the moment the two had gotten up-close and personal. I could still feel the heat of Tyler's palms on my shoulders, and on my cheek, and in the bone underneath my already-bruising skin.
He hadn't hit me to put me against the dumpster. I need to clarify. He'd hit me beforehand, yes. But if we are getting to specifics, he'd shoved me after clocking me in the jaw. It wasn't the other way around. He didn't knock me down, and then start wailing.
Not this time.
That's important to me. What's more important to Tyler, is that I was right where he wanted me. Against the dumpster, legs crumpled underneath me like paper.
If the pain in my teeth wasn't shooting across my mouth, I probably would have been thinking about how much of a miracle it was that we hadn't been reported for fighting behind Lou's again. No one in the bar seemed like the type to call the cops--so maybe it wasn't a miracle.
Do I even believe in miracles?
It's a miracle I haven't lost teeth yet.
I taste blood. Tangy, irony, sticky. Tyler says you can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick. I hoped a little too late that he was right. I'd already taken a heaping gulp, noting the way it ran slowly down my throat while my tongue prodded in search of any unmiraculous teeth.
Against the dumpster, legs crumpled underneath me like paper, the burning in my triceps so prominent that I didn't risk lifting a finger in retaliation.
Tyler didn't bother me for a revival, either. His fingers dipped into his pocket; busted, bleeding knuckles scraping past its edge. He pulled out a cigarette, stuck it between his lips that matched his knuckles in appearance.
There were two of him, for a moment. They blurred into one when he stepped closer. The orange glow of his cigarette was no longer the focal point on my horizon. My focal point was Tyler. My horizon was Tyler Durden.
His lips moved. They moved a lot. All that came out was that shrill, obnoxious ringing.
"...ation!!"
"Wh..." The breath of my first word was accentuated by an interrupting gurgle at the back or my throat; it could have been blood, it could have been bile. "What-"
I felt guilty. He hated repeating himself. If I couldn't hear, though, surely Tyler knew. If I know it, Tyler knows it.
"I said," Tyler started. Irritation already painted his voice. "Come on, train wreck, this isn't your...station!"
Tyler had a way of making himself visible. He had a way of telling me to stay with him. Of telling me not to tap out just yet. That the fun wasn't over. The last word in his sentence was rubbed in when the toe of his boot met with my clothed cock.
Being beneath Tyler; reclining on this dumpster while he stood in front of me and lit his cigarette. Looking at his hands and face, the way they were splattered with his blood, my blood. That, on its own, was enough to simply threaten to get me hard.
I couldn't decide if it was a moan or a cry that clawed its way shamelessly out of my lungs, but it didn't matter. Tyler would have laughed the same either way.
I am Jack's comic relief.
"I beat your ass black and blue, and you get hard." Tyler rolled his neck, laughing out smoke. "You'd might as well just say thank you."
"Thank you..."
An absent-minded slip.
I was only doing what Tyler wanted.
My hips spasmed up. My cock rutted along my boxers and khakis. I tried to get more friction, tried to feel more of Tyler's boot-sole.
"Pathetic." The toe of Tyler's boot pushed into me harder, until it slid past me, and planted firmly on the filthy concrete between my legs. "Get up."
"What?"
Tyler sighed. "I said, 'get up'," The two fingers that pinched his cigarette flicked in a curl towards himself. He was beckoning me. His eyes were downturned; the left one closed whenever he drug the back of his hand under his nose. I'd landed a hit to it earlier, and the proof was on Tyler's cropped, barely buttoned, cream-white toucan shirt. Incriminating red spatter. "Get on your knees, get the fuck up!"
Nothing was registering to me. Something in my brain wasn't firing off, and it was probably because any awareness I had left after our fight was knocked out when I hit the dumpster.
I've never diffused a bomb. I've never had to choose which wire to clip or pull. But it probably feels something similar to not completely understanding Tyler. A terrible, gnawing sort of pressure. If you don't complete the tasks quick enough, both situations yield the same result. An explosive detonation.
My body was jerked forward by the neck--Tyler had my tie, and he was the source of the pull. Not unlike a dog on a leash, it almost felt like I'd been shoved from the back.
I am Jack's involuntary unbalance.
The concrete dug into my knees through my khakis. It was uncomfortable; not enough to take my mind off the throbbing in my jaw. It was uncomfortable, like the burning sensation left by the fabric on the back of my neck, from Tyler's relentless heave on my tie. The only thing keeping my face from becoming even more closely acquainted with the concrete was Tyler's sturdy leg. He hadn't moved it from where it had planted itself after teasing my cock through my trousers.
I was half hard. I know this because Tyler knows this. I know it also because I can feel it, and the friction Tyler's leg gives me forces an unconscious jerk from my hips.
"Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa," Tyler fussed. He smacked my cheek twice with the back of his blood-sticky hand; the metallic scent was nothing new. I'd been smelling it since that beautiful hit to the jaw. "You're just proving my fucking point."
"What point?"
"Damn, you are just full of questions tonight, aren't you?" He pushed my face to his thigh, wiping the remaining blood on the back of my already filthy dress shirt. And when my cheek pressed against the fabric that form-fitted his warm skin, I whined. And when I whined, Tyler laughed.
I am Jack's overused punchline.
"I could beat your ass black and blue, and you'd get hard." He repeated.
"Well Jesus, I'm sorry-" I didn't raise my head.
"No, no," Tyler mocked. "Don't fucking apologize. Finish what you started."
"You--you started thi--"
"Don't fucking talk back."
My mouth went dry as I swallowed, despite the lingering, sticky blood. I listened. I had a lot of things to say, but Tyler already knew them. If I spoke now, I'd be wasting my breath, and I'd take another hit to the jaw.
My mouth opened anyway. I was resisting the urge to speak, but Tyler didn't give me a chance. His hand closed around my jaw, and my teeth clacked together. A bright twinge of pain flared where Tyler's middle and ring fingers pressed into the blanching bruise he put there. He raised my head, made me look into his narrowed, blue eyes. His smile was wide, lips closed tight and holding his cigarette in place. His look was hard to read. It was always hard to read. Tyler wasn't easy. But he looked overly-content. Likely with the way this situation he orchestrated had panned out, so far, just as he'd hoped.
"I know what it is you want."
Of course you do. I thought. It wasn't sarcastically. It was honestly. Whatever I know, Tyler knows. Of course he knows what I want. Of course you do.
I didn't speak.
I knew there was no sense in arguing with Tyler.
"So finish what you started." He nudged his foot forward, his shin dragging along my cock. That was a demand. I grunted, hips canting forward, and back. And forward again. And again. And again, and again.
I am Jack's unconscious lust.
Tyler held still for me--his feet were planted. He was strong; he wasn't going anywhere. I trusted Tyler, and he was drawing too much gratification from this to move without me finishing. His hand slipped from under my face and disappeared, my chin now digging into his thigh. I didn't dare open up my eyes. Not yet.
"Fucking pathetic." Tyler reminded.
I knew.
My hands came off the concrete. Little rocks and broken pieces of debris left indentations in my palms, remained on my knuckles. They were damp with rainwater, with oil, and God knows what else. One stopped above Tyler's leg, the other over his waist. And my hips stopped their movement, too. Tyler didn't ask me to stop, is the problem. When I opened my eyes, I saw just how much of a problem it was.
His eyes had grown wide, like I'd stabbed him in the back and twisted the knife. I'd better make this quick.
"C-can I--"
His gaze softened. His grin returned, and he took his cigarette from his lips after a long drag. He tapped the ashes into my hair, blew the white haze directly into my face. It stung my eyes, made them teary.
"Go right ahead, Ikea boy. Thank you for asking..." He popped the cigarette back between his lips. "Glad to see you're learnin' some simple fucking etiquette!"
I'd never snatched anything so fast in my life. One hand clutched the waistband of Tyler's navy-blue joggers--the ones with white stripes down each leg--and the other grabbed a fistful of fabric behind his knee.
My hips started again. I knew I couldn't undo my belt, or my khakis. Not here. I couldn't pull myself free from my boxers that had grown uncomfortably tight around my throbbing erection. That would take too long, and Tyler didn't want me making that kind of mess on his sweatpants. I'd have to finish here and deal with it when we got home.
I am Jack's future discomfort.
The friction, feeling of the fabric, combined with the pressure of Tyler's unmoving leg was undeniably fantastic. It's everything I wanted and more, just like Tyler.
He hadn't let me down, not yet. He'd shown me things inside my mind I couldn't find on my own. Tyler knew how to get in my head, and that thought alone made my knees dig down harder, made my fists tighten on his pants. My hips drove forward more desperately than they had been. They picked up speed, for what I could. The concrete in my knees was really almost as obnoxious as the ache in my jaw.
My jaw. It was pressed to Tyler's thigh. Every shift made it twinge. It hurt to smile. My nose was pressed against the low-cut crotch of his joggers, fingertips teasing his hip bone as I held onto him like my life depended on it. I felt a tickle on the back of my neck. A hand. Warm, not that soft. The fingers ran up my neck, into the hair at the back of my neck I kept trimmed short. They came down easily on my head, ran down my hair. Ran through it again.
"That's it."
Praise.
The heat building in my core was pushing over the edge. The stuttering of my hips had become frantic. Those fingers made their way to my chin. They lifted my head back up. My eyes met with Tyler's; that unglued, dominant satisfaction glaring down at me.
"Come." Tyler demanded. He jerked his knee up and I choked, catching a hard drag along my clothed member. Oh, and I came. Hard. Heat drenched my groin in my khakis, wracked my inner thighs. Sticky white spilled into my boxers, soiling the fabric.
Tyler laughed. I heard him, and I felt it, to. I felt his laugh shake my body, just as I felt a pinpoint burn bore into the back on my neck. My relaxing hold on his joggers turned to a claw, my feet kicking along the concrete. It no doubt scuffed my dress shoes--but I was about to go down, and I was going to take Tyler with me.
I smelled burning flesh. I smelled cigarette smoke. The smell infiltrated my nose, but this time, it didn't bring with it the same pleasant relaxation as when Tyler would smoke around me.
I have to hand it to him, it took my mind off my jaw until he forced my head down to his thigh again. He lurched over my body, keeping my head pinned between his dick and his ribs. The smell of his sweat partnering with the cheap smoke infiltrated my nose.
"Where the fuck would you be if you didn't have me?" Tyler half-whispered.
"I don't know!!" I cried. "I don't--I don't know!!"
The cigarette lifted. "That's right."
The leg I'd turned into my support-beam pulled from my grip. I caught myself on my hands, and collapsed to my elbows. My palms, filthy with the sludge of this parking lot, pressed into the back of my neck the moment I curled onto my side. Infection be damned. I hoped my shirt collar would cover the eventual scar I knew it would leave.
"Whenever you decide to get your sorry ass up, I'll be at the bus stop waiting for ya." I felt two harsh pats to my back. Upon contact with blossoming bruises, they reminded me of where Tyler had kicked me when I was down just minutes before.
Several harsh breaths left my mouth, one after another. Repeated, half-sentences of "Oh my God" were broken apart by pants, followed by useless groans of agony.
In my blurred vision, I could see Tyler walking away, dissappearing around the corner of Lou's.
He flicked the cigarette butt to the ground, and it bounced.
I closed my eyes.
Tyler wouldn't give me anything I couldn't handle.