Next Semester

7. exhausted

1638 words

The next few days were a lot of strategic weaving and dodging for Tyler. He had been waking up earlier and earlier every day to shake Jude off of his hip. The downside was that the 7am wake up time was starting to kill him. Every single morning began with him trudging to Braxton and throwing himself down on the couch in Josh's office. The professor fell into the habit of already having a coffee made for Tyler so that the boy wasn't falling asleep 10 minutes in to working.

Today was a particularly bad day for Tyler because he hadn't slept the night before (like he occasionally did) and he still had to drag himself out of the dorm room by 7:20am in order to avoid Jude. He had stumbled into Josh's office and slumped down into the couch, eyes closing as soon as he hit the cushion.

"Rough morning?" Josh chuckled as he sat a coffee mug on the table in front of the half-asleep Tyler and settled into one of the arm chairs next to the couch. Tyler didn't even open his eyes as he grumbled, "Didn't sleep."

Josh let out another small chuckle, "I couldn't tell." Tyler just groaned and cozied into the couch even more, allowing himself to fall half-horizontal. Josh sighed and leaned over to scoot Tyler's coffee closer to the couch, "Ty, drink this."

"M'dont wanna." Tyler grumbled, eyes still closed with a scrunch. Josh rolled his eyes and picked the cup up, urging the boy's tired hands to take it, "Tyler, we have work to do. You can't just sleep here all day."

"I hate you." Tyler groaned as he opened his eyes and pulled himself to sit up, cradling the coffee in his hands. Josh let out a small laugh, "I made you coffee; I don't think you're allowed to hate me."

Tyler just rolled his eyes and sipped the hot liquid, relishing in the warm comforting feeling of it gliding down his throat. He practically chugged the rest of it, leaving the older to wonder how he didn't burn his tongue. Tyler's eyes were still droopy, but he was awake nonetheless. He dragged his feet over to the man's desk and plopped down in front of it, assuming his usual position for when they worked together. Josh gently placed a stack of 3 books in front of him, each one containing a few sticky tabs marking different sections. Tyler scrubbed a hand over his face before opening the top book. He waited for Josh to sit down at his computer before he began reading the ISBN number for the man to type into their shared excel sheet. He also read (and spelled) the author's name, publishing company, and publishing year. He did the same with the next two books so that they could properly catalog them before Tyler began deep-diving them. They quickly found out that cataloging them first was a better idea than cataloging them afterwards when Tyler had mixed up the summaries for two of the books and had to reread both to figure out which summary went with which.

"I also wanted to ask if you wanted to continue the filing cabinet. I know that that's not technically part of your job, so if you don't want to it's no big deal." Josh smiled at him and, no matter how tired Tyler was, the boy could feel his heartbeat quicken. Before he ever realized what he was agreeing to, Tyler nodded, "I can do it."

"Are you sure? Don't feel like you have to. I can do it if it's too much work." Josh asked, his tone soft and warm and making Tyler yearn to fall asleep next to him. The boy internally kicked himself and straightened in his chair, "Yeah, it's fine. I got it, Professor Dun."

Josh laughed and continued to type and click on his computer, earning a slightly annoyed "What?" from Tyler.

"Your dedication to calling me Professor Dun is amusing is all." Josh's tongue peeked between his teeth as he laughed and Tyler was swooning. He knew that if he called the man by his first name it would be too close, too personal. It would put him in dangerous territory for letting himself slip and say something that would definitely get him fired and kicked out of the man's office.