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It had been about a month into the school year when, not to be melodramatic, the most terrible thing within the school year happened to Tyler.
See, there was this guy in Tyler’s class named Aiden.
Blond (that is, if somebody with such terribly bleached hair can be called a blond at all. Maybe Tyler would just call it a graceful “fake blond” and leave it at that) hair, red eyes (seriously, what the hell is it with that?? You have to get glasses and you pick red eyed contacts? Though Tyler can visualize Aiden popping out of the womb with red eyes easily, it fits well in his opinion), and he’s oddly short for a teenage guy. Always wears smiley faces on his clothes, and is also always smiling.
Tyler thinks Aiden’s kind of annoying. The guy really likes to bother him during the few interactions that they do have, probably for kicks. Tyler, being short tempered as he is, doesn’t enjoy being annoyed so often, though having someone who volleys back insults is kind of okay-ish or whatever.
Back to the actual point here—a month or so into the school year, they’d had a test on some math subject and Aiden had happened to fail while Tyler got top of that class (thanks to Logan for that one), and so, his teacher decided that the best course of events was to ask Tyler to tutor Aiden in math.
“Just for a bit until he gets his grades back up,” the lady had said sweetly, and Tyler couldn’t bring himself to get mad at her, but no, god, NO. Does the universe hate ME??
Tyler had choked out some agreement before spending all night groaning about it to Taylor with pure annoyance, flinging himself back onto the bed like he’d been told he was deathly ill. Honestly, in Tyler’s very fair and objective eyes, it was, like, basically just as bad.
Their first tutoring session had been…something, Tyler supposed. Aiden had showed up late by half an hour, and the tutoring sessions were supposed to be only one hour. Tyler had been two seconds away from chucking a pen at that absolute psycho.
Aiden had strolled over to the chair painfully slowly with his arms behind his head, big grin pasted on as he hummed all the way. When he finally sat down, Tyler fixed his gaze on him, waiting expectantly for something, an excuse, maybe.
Aiden met his gaze with a particularly smug look, and only said, “Hiii. Tyler, right?”
“Yeah,” Tyler huffed in annoyance at the lack of answer, crossing his arms as he glared hard at Aiden already. “Tyler.”
“Can I call you Ty-Ty?” Aiden asked abruptly in a sickly sweet tone instead of introducing himself back (though Tyler already knew his name anyway), and blinked innocently up at the boy as he waited for an answer.
“WHAT?!” Tyler immediately snapped, slamming his hands down on the table and, in his very unbiased opinion, not overreacting at all.
“Not a no,” Aiden sing songed, leaning closer towards him. “Ty-Ty.”
“It’s definitely a no!” Tyler replied, bringing down the volume slightly because they were in a library but basically still yelling anyway.
“Awww…” Aiden glanced to the side with a melodramatic sigh before abruptly grinning at Tyler again, clearly having thought of another way to annoy him now. “How about just Ty? Or Ty-rex? No, no, Ty-lor Swift. Ty…I’m blanking now.”
“SHUT UP!” Tyler said way too loudly again, falling for the bait so easily and ugh fuck anger issues, I hope they die.
“Ty-Ty, we’re in a library, calm down,” Aiden mock cooed, reaching over as if about to pat Tyler’s hand or something just to bother him more.
Tyler had leaned back like he was allergic to Aiden, face twisting in mild disgust this time. He glared at him hard as he snatched his hand back. “I told you not to call me Ty-Ty!”
And then they got kicked out of the library for being too loud, and had a very eloquent following twenty five minutes of “tutoring” that was just varying exchanged insults, bickering, and a lot of, for lack of any more elegant sounding word that Tyler could come up with, ragebait.
So yeah. That had been Tyler’s first major impression of Aiden, a very bad one. In the following month or so, their tutoring sessions passed by similarly to that. Arguing and arguing and arguing.
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The next occurence between the two of them that stuck out to Tyler was maybe a month and a half into these tutoring sessions.
“Just do the worksheet,” Tyler had groaned, pushing the paper full of blank math equations towards him with a scowl. Aiden, despite being a month and a half into tutoring sessions with Tyler, had not managed to solve even one (1) math equation in that time, probably to spite both the education system and Tyler in one.
Aiden sighed loudly at the request, waving a hand dismissively when Tyler asked. “You want me to actually do math work during a math tutoring session? That’s soooo boring, Tyler. Please. Be serious.”
“Oh my god,” Tyler groaned in complaint again, tossing his head back like he was about to give up on it by now. “You’re the worst.”
“Fine,” Aiden had finally conceded, taking the worksheet with one of his hands. He angled his head away from it a bit as if he was allergic to the math on the paper. Finally, his eyes landed on Tyler again. “But I’ll only do it if you cut a deal with me.”
Tyler brought his head back down to shoot Aiden a suspecting glare at those stupid red eye contacts of Aiden’s. “A deal? What kind of deal, exactly, psycho?”
Aiden hummed thoughtfully, tapping a finger to his lip to overdramatize it. “That is the question. How about,” he started with another grin. “I’ll do one equation for every nickname you’ll give me permission to call you.”
“I really don’t care about math that much,” said Tyler flatly, though sheer dread flickered in his expression at the idea of letting Aiden nickname him for math.
“Two equations per nickname?” Aiden asked hopefully, clearly quite set on this idea of his. He had come up with many nicknames throughout the time they’d spent together, which Tyler all shot down the second Aiden would say them.
Tyler considered it briefly. If Aiden actually showed improvement, he’d get out of these tutoring sessions, right? So it was just a long term investment. Nothing friendly about it at all. “Fine.”
“This will be so much fun, Ty-Ty!” Aiden declared cheerily, clapping his hands together.
“Two,” Tyler merely stated, pointing at the math worksheet now.
Aiden gave a two fingered mock salute Tyler’s way before turning his attention to the paper. After that day, Tyler came to the very unfortunate realization that Aiden was actually quite smart and very good at math because, in his words, “private school just teaches way ahead.”
They let that idiot into private school?? How rich could his parents possibly BE for them to let his annoying ass into a fancy private school? Maybe it just wasn’t that fancy if they let him in there. Yeah. That’s what Tyler thinks.
Tyler isn’t really sure how it happened, but after that, Aiden somehow tricked Tyler into opening up during their tutoring sessions and they somehow managed to get closer, and kind of ended up friends in some manner of the word.
⁺ . ✦⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹✦ . ⁺
Upon thinking of those two memories, this leads Tyler to his more current dilemma.
Despite thinking at the start that Aiden was stupid (unfortunately inaccurate) and dressed stupid (kinda true) and dyed his hair badly (that one was very true), Tyler has now started finding him actually…was there a better phrase than “starting to find him hot”? Hmm. Finding him kind of okay ish to look at.
It wasn’t like he actually wanted to date Aiden or anything, he’d just started forming a tiny crush on Aiden in the midst of bickering that turned friendly over a few months’ course. Except maybe he definitely did want to date Aiden, and Tyler was very spiteful about this fact.
While distracted by this horrible notion, Tyler doesn’t quite yet notice Aiden popping up in the hallway while chatting away with Ashlyn.
Aiden drags Ashlyn along to go talk to Tyler, ignoring the girl’s obvious protests of this in favor of his favorite thing, obnoxious amounts of socializing.
“So,” Aiden starts cheerfully. “Ash, this is my nerd tutor Tyler. Ash, nerd tutor Ty—”
“Do not call me that,” Tyler cuts him off with a glare.
“I’ll do two math problems for ya later!” Aiden offers with a carefree gesture of his hand, like always not listening to what Tyler says about nicknames.
Tyler sighs and says nothing back.
“Uh…hi?” Ashlyn finally offers with an awkward glance to the side, clearly not enthused by the amount of social interaction just this is.
Aiden slings an arm around her shoulders casually. “I’ll just talk for the both of us or whatever. She’s shy.”
“Right,” Tyler says flatly in acknowledgement, some odd feeling that he refuses to label as jealousy bubbling up at the sight in front of him.
They sit in silence for a quick second before Tyler mutters an excuse about making Aiden “do those two math problems now before he forgets” and dragging the fake blond off to do that. Well. Yeah, maybe just to get him off of Ashlyn.
Aiden blinks at Tyler, the picture of faux innocence. “Did you drag me away to kiss me or something, Ty-Ty?”
“WHAT??” Tyler flushes slightly in embarrassment at the idea, and, worse, embarrassment that he is briefly tempted to say yes, he does. Of course, he doesn’t, but there’s just a devil on his shoulder or whatever.
“What?” Aiden echoes with a curious tilt of his head like he’s wondering why Tyler would react so drastically. Knowing Aiden, he’s definitely just trying to piss Tyler off.
“You just suggested YOU and ME kissing! I was disgusted, you know!” Tyler sputters, both offended by the idea and very tempted by it despite himself.
“I mean,” Aiden starts, a little smirk curving up at his lips. “you did look a little jealous back there when I was with Ash.”
“I was NOT!” Tyler snaps defensively. Oh my god that was way too quick I did not sound convincing but no I’m not jealous, ugh—!
“Sure,” Aiden agrees drily; sarcastically.
“It’s true, psycho,” Tyler huffs, trying to salvage his side of this not really argument. Really, he’s very (mildly) aware he was indeed jealous, but his dignity refuses to admit it.
“Mhm,” Aiden agrees sarcastically again, probably just for the sake of mocking how bad Tyler is at denying things calmly. “You’d make a real terrible lawyer. Just an offhand thought, you know?”
“Stop giving me sarcasm!” Tyler complained, swatting the air rather than Aiden anyway.
“Who, me?” Aiden asks sweetly, clasping his hands together like he’s just a cute, little and very innocent boy.
“Yes, you!” Tyler replies, temper flaring up still because Aiden really does provoke him way too easily for either of their own good(s).
Aiden tilts his head curiously at Tyler, before asking bluntly, “Okay, but like…are you sure you didn’t want a kiss?”
“YES?!” Tyler says hopelessly as heat pricks at his neck again, clearly very embarrassed by this topic of conversation.
“You don’t sound very sure,” Aiden quips with that smug grin of his that Tyler used to hate so much but is really finding himself to be oh so horribly into now.
“You sound desperate!” Tyler insults as a last measure for ignoring that voice in his head that is very much so encouraging the idea of kissing Aiden.
“Maybe,” Aiden drawls, dragging the word out sing song as he leans closer to Tyler.
Tyler can very much so feel the heat of blush on his face now, and he hates it. “WHAT?!”
Aiden just goes for the feigned innocence again, giving Tyler the most fake clueless smile of his life.
Tyler takes a second before kissing him even though there’s the voice of his pride and dignity screaming in his ear, keeping one hand on his shoulder to close the (not that bad) height difference.
It’s really an innocent ish kiss by most standards, not lasting that long or anything. Their lips press together softly; gentler than something Tyler really pictured any kiss he’d have with anyone as. Then again, Tyler is kind of terrible at romance, but whatever, he’s kissing a guy despite that fact. Maybe kissing the most annoying guy he’s ever met, and he has terrible taste, and you know what, he actually doesn’t like him at all.
Aiden still gives him a kinda dopey grin after, and Tyler is dumbly endeared by it for a second before remembering himself.
But it really isn’t like Tyler likes him or anything. Not at all.
“By the way,” Tyler begins, about to be petty like usual. “if you ever want me to kiss you again, you’re letting me bleach your hair.”
“Why not?” Aiden agrees easily. “Still not doing math for you, though, Ty-Ty.”
“Ugh!”