Intimidation ♡ joshler

fifteen

Tyler is taken aback the next morning when Josh swings his school bag around in front of him, unzips it, and retrieves a box of thirty pencils, because he really didn't think Josh would even care enough to give him a sad little pencil sharpened down to the eraser (this has happened before), let alone go out to the store and buy him entire thirty pack.

"I ran and bought you these since I stole all of yours," Josh says, holding the box out to the smaller of the two. "Bought a bigger count since you like to share so much, though I'd prefer if you kept this for yourself; I bought them for you."

"You really didn't have to, Josh," Tyler mumbles to the other boy, taking the box from him to put in his own bag.  

Josh only shrugs nonchalantly, "I mean, it was only around five dollars, s'not really a big deal."

Tyler flushes, hanging his head again a bit sheepishly.

"Hey, don't be embarrassed," Josh says softly, and Tyler fucking flinches as a gentle, comforting hand is placed on his shoulder, the touch unexpected; Josh has never touched him before now.

But, anyways, Tyler's always been one to feed off of affection granted by other people—like a fucking leech—and to most people, a hand resting on their shoulder is probably one of the most trivial gestures to receive.  But to Tyler, affection is affection, and he'll take any form affection greedily, especially if it's from Josh.

Tyler picks his head up a little to smile shyly at him.  This pleases Josh; smiling always pleases Josh.

The taller of the two (which is Josh in this story, in case you didn't know) opens his mouth to say something, but stops himself before he can even produce any sound, and closes his mouth once again.

Tyler has no idea what he was going to say before psyching himself out of doing so, but he bets money that it was gonna be something flirtier than usual.  What else could it honestly be?

And then a new question arises: why does Josh even flirt with him anyways?  Tyler's a petty gremlin that just can't seem to stop belittling himself—see?

"What're you thinking about, Shybutt?" Josh's voice pulls Tyler out of his thoughts.  Tyler— needless to say—blushes as he shrugs, and Josh laughs a little at this as he makes a comment about Tyler's consistent shrugging, "What do you know?"

Tyler smiles, this one more confident as he shrugs again, and Josh lets out another laugh.

"You sure are something else," Josh says, and Tyler doesn't even start to take it the wrong way and get offended since Josh said it with so much fondness; it leaves Tyler blushing again, his smile widening to the point that it probably looks dumb, so he drops his head until it dulls down.