Intimidation ♡ joshler

thirty one

"Hey, Ruby!" Tyler chirps out in a voice one would speak to a baby with as he enters his bedroom, bags from Walmart in his hands.  The noise woke the cat, who was curled up on Tyler's bed.  She stretches and yawns before getting up to greet the boy she quickly grew attached to, mewling softly as said boy scratches her fur. "We bought you some stuff!"

Zack enters as well with a container of kitty litter—it was too heavy for Tyler's wimpy noodle arms to lift up—and pours a reasonable amount of it into the litter box the teen had left on the floor.  Tyler lifts Ruby off the floor and gently sets her in the litter box.

"This is where you potty, only here!" Tyler continues, and Zack laughs from above him, so he responds with a questioning glance.

"You realize you're talking to a cat, right?" Zack teases playfully, and Tyler flushes a little as he unpacks the cat bowls, handing one to the older man.

"Fill it with water for me?" Tyler asks, opening the bag of cat food and pouring it into the other bowl before setting it out of the way.  Zack leaves with the empty bowl and Tyler shows the food to Ruby, who starts eating it as soon as she gets to it.  They've been giving her bologna until now, but she was only licking it rather than biting it.

Zack is back barely a minute later with the bowl of water in hand, setting it down next to the food, taking a moment to pet the cat himself as she continues to eat as if she hasn't done so in days.

"Wanna help me put up the tree?" Zack asks, earning an enthusiastic nod from his younger brother.

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"Some of those need to go up towards the top of the tree," Zack suggests as he peeks into the living room from the kitchen, where he was working on dinner for the two (also known as heating Thanksgiving leftovers).

Tyler sighs quietly, moving the glass ornament currently in his hand away from the tree, looking up towards the top pitifully.  Tyler wouldn't call himself short, exactly—maybe around five and a half feet—but this tree is tall as fuck.  Maybe seven feet, if he had to guess, or at least close to it.

"I don't think I'm tall enough," Tyler speaks up, pushing himself up onto his toes and reaching the ornament as high as he can to push the loop onto one of the prickly branches.  He thinks he actually got it onto one securely, but he's proven wrong when he hears it shatter upon impact against the wooden floor.

And when Zack rushes in with a shout of "what the fuck was that," he knows that he probably just fucked up again.

Tyler watches, frozen in a mix of horror and anxiety as his older brother bends down to gather the broken pieces, realizing that it's one of Zack's favorites—he got it from an old close friend of his before she passed away, and he had treasured it ever since.

And Tyler starts trembling, because he definitely fucked up.

Zack takes in a shuddering breath, refusing to even look in Tyler's direction as he speaks, voice low and shaky, "Just go to your room before I lose my shit."

He hauls ass immediately after the words come out of the other's mouth, and he's fucking blessed, because pulling a stunt like that usually ends in Zack getting physical with the weaker boy.

Tyler's still twitching and breathing heavily and wills himself to calm the fuck down as he curls in on himself on his bed.

And once he's starting to calm himself down, the guilt of what he's done finally hits him.

He's broken the last thing Zack's friend gifted him, and she will never be able to give him anything else ever again, because it's kinda difficult to receive a gift from a dead person.

He's so fucking destructive and has only been a burden on Zack ever since he took him in.

Tyler cries himself to sleep despite not eating dinner yet.

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