| red yarn | tyrus au ☆

. the red yarn grows .

As stated, Cyrus and TJ meet again on a cool autumn afternoon. However, several events led to this finally happening. For example, Cyrus and Jonah were recording a video for the new students of Jefferson Middle School.

Metcalf, the principal, had specifically asked Cyrus to do these videos for the school, but Jonah also joined in to help Cyrus in recording the videos. When they had started recording, Cyrus grew nervous, and they ran into videos that couldn't be used, so Jonah stepped in to do the recordings instead. However, Cyrus stepped out to get air due to nervousness, and ended up going to the swings of the local park to relax.

TJ has his own events that led to him meeting Cyrus again as well, which in his case was tutoring with Buffy going poorly.

"TJ, come on! If you want to stay on the basketball team, you need to focus!" Buffy was already losing her patience trying to tutor TJ. He never seemed to focus on the lessons she was trying to give, and the only reason she was even doing this was because of Cyrus.

Although Cyrus and TJ had technically met with the muffin incident, Buffy never really counted it as then meeting, as they didn't really get to start knowing each other, which Buffy was thankful for. She didn't want Cyrus having to deal with TJ too, like she had to right now because TJ had gotten Cyrus that muffin.

"What are you talking about? I am paying attention!" TJ wasn't exactly a fan of being called out for not paying attention very well, and he was already frustrated having to get tutoring in the first place. All of this tutoring, especially from Buffy, made him feel more stupid than he already felt, which was pretty impressive. Why could he never grasp what was happening in math class? What was wrong with him?

"Oh yeah? Then what have I been talking about for the past 5 minutes?"

"Uh- math?"

Buffy just groaned. She knew this tutoring thing was going to be hopeless from the start, but the fact that TJ isn't even putting any effort in makes it just that much more hopeless.

"Ugh.. of course you weren't paying attention, let's try a different problem then, a pre-algebra one might be good just to get you focused in on doing the problems."

TJ was already done with this tutoring the moment he started, and as more time went past the more stupid he felt. He didn't understand any of the problems, and seeing Buffy seem like she could do these problems faster than he could read them wasn't helping. He just wanted to get this tutoring over with, and if that meant guessing the answer for everything, he was going to do just that.

Buffy looked over and saw TJ scribbling away at his paper, and was happy. She didn't realize he was just randomly scribbling and then guessing, and she thought he was genuinely trying. TJ making an effort and actually trying to do the problems made this tutoring seem like it actually was useful for TJ and that she wasn't doing this for nothing.

"Uh- how did you arrive at that answer?" When TJ said the answer was 25, Buffy really didn't know how to respond. How did he get there? Had he really not learned any pre-algebra yet?

"Well, is it right?"

"No, it's not.."

"That makes sense, because I guessed."

"Okay, uh.. maybe some warmup problems would help? I know the multiplication tables always help me!" Although Buffy knew TJ probably didn't care about this tutoring, she really thought he would know pre-algebra at least. Maybe he's struggling more than she thought, and that made her somewhat determined to help him out.

After about 5 seconds of TJ attempting to work with the multiplication tables, he just threw his pencil down onto his notebook. Why did his coach think tutoring would help? All it's doing it making him feel worse, and the fact that he can't do the multiplication tables is making that worse feeling even more terrible.