#tyler rust x ofc

[slashhinginghasher]

Monster ch. 4 - Four Letter Word (John Tyler x OFC)

*Spongebob shouting from the roof voice* I update every 7 months and I’m proud!

Ao3 link

Opening quote from “A List Of All The Ways I’d Like You To Kill Me” by Evil MTN, from The Underground Library of Found Poetry

Chapter summary: Ieva quits her job and has several emotional crises

7. If all else fails, you could always just want me around.        • You know my heart can’t take it. 8. I hope you never find out just how horrible I really am.

A List Of All The Ways I’d Like You To Kill Me - Evil Mtn.

~

She had a nightmare, one of the worst in years.

She was back in church in Virginia. Everyone was waiting in line for the eucharist, but instead of dusty old Father Daniel with a handful of equally dusty crackers, it was Randall with his fucking pin nailer. Ruth stood beside him in a long white dress. A river of rust stained the fabric from waist to toes, and she held a chalice up to collect the blood spurting from the red ruin of her throat. One by one, the church-goers knelt before Randall with open mouths and eyes gleaming in ecstasy so he could drive a nail through their tongues. Ieva flinched at every ker-chunk, feeling an answering pain in her body. Several times she tried to leave the line, only to be forced back by Janine’s claw-like grip or a whack from Miriam’s cane.

When she reached the front, she had to be forced onto her knees. Randall grinned his awful, greasy smile while Ruth gurgled pitifully next to him.

“Hiya kid,” he said. Then he lined up the pin nailer between Ieva’s eyes and pulled the trigger.

***

The back of Ieva’s hand smacked against her forehead hard enough to wake her with a jolt. Her cheeks felt tight with the salt of dried tears, and a headache - separate from the phantom sting of the pin nailer - throbbed behind her eyes. She was still in her underwear. John was lounging next to her, stripped down to his white undershirt and boxer briefs and focused intently on something on his phone. He’d cranked the heat up high enough that neither of them were uncomfortable in their undressed state.

Woe unto the motel owner and their power bill at the end of the month.

John set his phone aside when he heard Ieva move, sliding down so they were lying face to face. He took her hand in his and gently pulled it away from her face. There was something painfully tender in his expression - not as condescending as the pity look, but sorrowful all the same - and she had a sudden, gnawing feeling that he’d been looking at the article again.

“There was a picture of you, from high school,” he said, confirming her suspicions. “You looked so sad.”

“Yeah.”

There was really nothing to say to that. She had been sad, and angry, and scared, and a million other emotions that rarely included anything approximating happiness.

He was fascinating himself with her hand now: feeling the shape of each knuckle and delicate bone, tracing the lines of her palm with a neatly trimmed nail. The soft rasp of his skin against hers filled her with that hot, shivery feeling that John seemed to inspire so easily in her. “Arousal” did not adequately describe it; the word was too pedestrian, too textbook. It didn’t cover that underlying thrill of fear. Fear of him - how effortlessly he could break her, could snap her like a fingerbone, could leave her hollow and alone in the dirt. Fear of herself - how quickly those nameless cravings of hers had latched on to a target, and with such ferocity. Fear of the wanting itself - how vulnerable the ability to be rejected left her.

John pressed her palm to his mouth, and Ieva’s breath stuttered in time with her heartbeat. She felt him smile against her hand. His thumb was over the thrumming pulse in her wrist. He knew exactly how badly he affected her, the bastard.

(A bastard who seemed to catch her only at her worst moments and stayed anyway. A bastard who crossed half the country just to fuck her.)

“What do you want, Eva?” he asked, curling her fingers against his cheek.

I want you to touch me forever. I want you to never touch me again. I want to scream until my vocal cords shatter like glass and I choke on my own teeth. I want to cut you open and crawl inside your bones. I want to have never met you. I want to ink my name on your tongue so everything you say for the rest of your life tastes like me. I want to run as fast and as hard as I can so you can’t abandon me first.

“I want you to say my name right,” was what left her stupid mouth. She felt him frown before he pulled away from her hand entirely to look her directly in the eye.

“Eva.”

“Ieva,” she corrected.

“Yeva?” he offered tentatively.

“Ieva,” she said slowly. John repeated after her, carefully wrapping his mouth around the unfamiliar vowels until she nodded her approval.

“Ieva,” he murmured to himself. “Ieva, Ieva, Ieva…”

He smiled brilliantly, an expression of boyish delight that took years off his face, and pulled her in for a passionate kiss. The movement of his lips against hers was slow, but his hands were everywhere, gripping too tightly and not tightly enough. Ieva couldn’t stop her wince when he prodded at the entrance of her cunt, still painful from how brutally he’d fucked her earlier.

“Oh, you poor thing,” he cooed, sounding inordinately pleased with himself. “I’ve been rough with you, haven’t I?”

Smug bastard.

Ieva wanted to hit him. The most she could manage was a pathetic growl, which earned her a chuckle as he slid her panties down her legs. He tossed them behind him, then worked his way back up with tongue and teeth until he reached the apex of her thighs.

One of the more common questions people asked her about the Tower - especially the handful who knew about Randall’s existence - was whether or not she’d been raped. They didn’t actually say the word “rape” very often; there was usually a lot of awkward gesturing and “did they– you know”, or roundabout euphemisms more suited to a five-year-old. But they did ask, and they asked a lot. (The men and boys around her could be quite insistent, which confused her until she concluded that they were probably getting off on the thought of it in private.)

The truth was she didn’t know. There were so many gaps in her memory from the drugs that it was entirely possible that someone, or multiple someones, could have sexually abused her without her knowledge. And quite frankly, she didn’t care. What she did remember was being used for target practice by a bunch of bored methheads, having wall tacks stuck in her face and torso and legs, eating rotten scraps from the trash out of sheer desperate starvation. They had gotten into her blood, violated her on a neurochemical level; why would it matter if there was a dick involved at some point? But her therapists at rehab hadn’t understood that, no matter how she explained, and the church’s concerns with the sanctity of the body started and ended at the genital area, so she just started meeting the topic with stony silence.

Technically, the things John had done to her probably counted as rape. She hadn’t said “no”, but she certainly hadn’t said “yes” either. He’d made her cry and left her with bruises and teeth marks, and she now knew that he’d done the same or worse to other women in the past. But the thing was, it didn’t feel like abuse. John’s touch didn’t leave her wanting to scrub her skin off the way the memories of the Tower did. It didn’t feel like a violation when he hurt her, and it sure as hell didn’t feel like a violation now when he spread her folds open with his thumbs and gave her a long, slow, rapturous lick.

The wet heat of his tongue was far more forgiving than his fingers, and she felt herself arching into it without thinking. John’s hands clamped onto her hips and held her down as he devoured her like a man starved. Every flick of his tongue against her clit sent electricity up her spine, her walls fluttering around the muscle when he pushed it inside. She nearly wept with the intensity of her orgasm, legs shaking and hands grasping uselessly at the sheets, spine bowing until she was practically arched off the bed. John kept his mouth latched onto her the entire time, greedily drinking every drop of her pleasure. The frantic motion of his tongue became slower, gentler, until he was pressing soft kisses to her trembling inner thighs, and Ieva collapsed, chest heaving for breath and unshed tears turning the dimly lit room into a kaleidoscope.

John shifted up to rest his head on her stomach, one hand tucked under her waist and the thumb of the other rubbing circles into her hip bone. Ieva threaded her fingers through his curls and scratched gently at his scalp. She ought to do something for him in return, she figured, to assure him that she was worth keeping around, but her throat was still quite sore from all the crying she’d done over the past…

How long? It had been light when they pulled up to the motel, and there was a bit of light filtering through the blinds now, but she couldn’t tell if it was the same light. Hell, she didn’t even know if it had been morning or evening when they left her apartment to come here. Time didn’t seem to work right when John was around; minutes, hours, and days shrugged their shoulders and slumped in a pile together in a corner. She didn’t even know how long she’d been lying there petting his hair.

Either she tensed up or John was a mind reader, because he lifted his head to smile at her, eyes warm and soft and completely at odds with the taste of her pussy still thick on his tongue when he kissed her. He ran two fingers over her still-dripping slit - she squeaked - and pushed them between her lips.

“See?” he purred. “See how sweet you taste.”

His big hand cradled her head like it was the most delicate glass while his tongue plundered her mouth in a sinful dance that had her squirming again in no time. She tugged at his shirt, the thin cotton an insultingly thick barrier between his skin and hers. He pulled away to remove it, and Ieva took advantage of the space to push him over and straddle him the way he’d had her before.

She was empty and aching and needy now, breathless as John freed his staggeringly hard cock from the confines of his underwear. He dragged the swollen head through her drenched folds, teasing clit until she dug her fingernails into the smooth planes of his chest. John’s first push into her channel knocked the air from her lungs as her body jumped from the pain of not enough to the pain of too much.

It hurt to have him, and it hurt to be without him. How fitting.

Despite what John’s obsession with her body may have suggested, Ieva was no sex goddess, and though John slid in easily enough, she had no idea what to do once she was full of him. She rolled her hips experimentally, nerve endings sparkling at the feeling of him pressed against every part of her. John let out a moan that was almost a whimper and grabbed at her hips, forcing her to repeat the movement. Ieva was perfectly fine giving him control. She went pliant in his arms, letting him push and pull her the way he wanted as he thrust into her hard enough to make her see stars.

The pace was fast and rough, but her climax came on slowly, a wave of warmth that crept over her like molasses and intensified until her toes curled and her legs turned to jelly. John fucked her through it, past it, beyond it. He was nearing his own end, his strokes stuttering out of rhythm.

“That’s it, god, just like that… so good, you’re so good, my perfect girl, you’re so… god I love you…”

Ieva’s whole body stiffened in shock, and that was enough to send him over the edge.

“I love you,” he gasped as he came, “I love you, I love you, I love you…”

She couldn’t respond to that. Not in English, not in Latvian, not in any way that mattered. She hid her face away in the crook of his neck and tried very hard not to cry again.

***

There were eight unread messages and three missed calls on Ieva’s phone when they returned to her apartment. As she dismissed the notifications, fully intending to ignore the existence of everything and everyone outside her four walls, Ray’s name popped up on the screen with a buzz.

She could reject the call. She could very, very easily reject the call. She could take the battery out and smash it and hide in her apartment until she was evicted for nonpayment and then run away and find some abandoned cabin in the woods and–

She answered the phone with a feeling of heavy resignation.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Iz. How you holdin’ up?”

The relief in her boss’s voice was palpable, like he’d been worried about her doing something permanent with a razor. She wouldn’t do that. She’d just finished touching up a particularly intricate bit of knotwork on her left arm; no way would she cut over that. It was one of the main reasons she’d started tattooing herself in the first place, to stop herself from scratching and slicing her skin to ribbons…

Ray was still waiting on an answer.

“Holding,” she said. “Alive.” Her tongue felt like lead. The bed dipped as John seated himself behind her and snaked his arms around her waist.

“There’s no rush,” Ray was saying, “absolutely no rush. But we were wondering if you had any idea of when you might be ready to come back in.”

Come back in. She thought about it. Imagined herself back at the shop. The other artists trying and failing to act casual as they calculated how long they had to wait to start asking questions about her childhood without being insensitive. Jokes and comments cut off mid-sentence for fear of offending her. The disgusting, pitying tenderness in their eyes as they tried to figure out how to deal with her now.

She felt bile rising in her throat.

“I’m not.”

“Not… You’re not sure?”

“Coming back. I’m not coming back.”

John’s grip tightened querulously, but he was a non-entity to her right now.

“What do you mean you’re not coming back? Why?” Ray was starting to sound a little panicked, and she remembered all in a rush that he’d lost his kid sister to suicide some time ago.

“Because you know.” Ieva felt her voice crack. “You all know and I’ll have to see it on all your faces and I can’t–” She pressed her knuckles to her forehead, hard. “I can’t. I can’t.”

“Oh, kid,” and there was that fucking pity, “you know it’s not like that. No one is judging you for this, we’d never–”

“Tell me then,” she cut him off. “Tell me that it changes nothing and everything is gonna be just the same.”

Ray was silent. So was John. Listening.

“You can’t. You can’t say it because you know it isn’t true.”

There was a defeated sigh over the line. Ieva could practically see him tugging at his beard the way he did when he was frustrated.

“No, you’re right, you’re…” Another sigh. “You’re really sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Alright. There’ll be some paperwork, and your gear–”

“I can come get it today.”

***

The paperwork was minimal, just a few signatures to prove that she was actually leaving and Ray hadn’t just decided to stop paying her. She scrawled her name across the requisite lines without reading any of it and shoved it back across Ray’s desk. He stacked the pages together and frowned.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

“You said that.”

Ray heaved out yet another fatherly sigh. He glanced at the photo of him and the dead sister on the wall beside him. She didn’t look a thing like Ieva.

“You don’t have to go and carry all this alone. It’s not…” He searched for the word. “...healthy.”

Not safe, was what he meant.

“I’m not. I have… someone.”

He looked up at her sharply.

“Since when?”

“It’s new. He’s good. For me.”

“This ‘someone’ have anything to do with you leaving?”

Ray was really scrutinizing her now, and she was really done with the conversation.

“No.”

She’d pulled her hair back tight enough to hurt, Spike skewered through the bun like a vampire’s stake, and pulled on her leather jacket and her biggest, stompiest boots before coming down to the shop - her version of armor. One of the regulars had called it her “scary bitch look”, which she hadn’t found as funny as he’d wanted her to. She felt herself hunkering down into it now, hackles up like a dog about to bite.

After another moment of hard staring, Ray gave up, shoulders slumping.

“Alright,” he said softly. “Go on, then.”

They both stood. Ieva stooped to pick up the box she’d thrown all her stuff in under the silent stares of everyone in the building. Before she could flee, Ray stepped around the desk and pulled her into a tight hug, made awkward by the box between them.

“If you ever need a reference, give me a call,” he said softly. “And make sure that ‘someone’ keeps being good to you and kick his ass out the door the second he’s not.”

Ieva nodded stiffly and beelined for the door, eyes prickling. God, she was so fucking sick of crying.

“Iz!” Avery called out as she passed, and she ignored him. “Iz, wait! Eva!”

Cold air slapped her in the face as she shouldered through the door. John was parked at the curb, where he’d waited in the car while she handled things inside. She was glad he’d decided to do so on his own; she didn’t know how she would have asked him to if he hadn’t.

Halfway to the car, a hand grabbed her elbow. She whipped around, boots slipping on the icy sidewalk, to see that Avery had followed her outside.

“Hey, why didn’t you wait? I know you heard me.”

Because she didn’t want to fucking talk to him.

“What do you want, Avery?”

Ieva’s reserves of politeness were running very dry. Avery opened his mouth to answer, then paused, looking past her with a darkening expression. Ieva glanced over her shoulder. John had gotten out of the car and was stalking towards them, staring coldly at Avery’s hand still on her arm.

“Who the fuck is that, Izzie?”

She hated that nickname.

“It’s John.”

The moment he was within reach, Ieva shoved the box into John’s hands with a muttered request to please put it in the trunk. She didn’t think John was the sort of person who would start a physical altercation with a stranger, but he had a nasty look in his eyes, and just because he could toss her around like a ragdoll didn’t necessarily mean he could hold his own against another grown man. Thankfully, he caught the meaningful look in her own gaze and complied without comment.

“Is he making you leave?” Avery asked, leaning in closer.

“He doesn’t make me do anything,” Ieva snapped. That was patently untrue in most scenarios, but did actually apply to this one, and anyway, Avery didn’t need to know about all that.

“Who the hell is this guy, Izzie?”

“He’s…” She hesitated. How did one describe John? Boyfriend? Partner? Lover? Stalker but it’s okay because he fucks real good? “He’s mine,” she settled on, somewhat lamely.

John was still standing by the car, but god, she could practically feel the smugness radiating off of him. Avery sneered.

“I don’t get it. Why him?”

It wasn’t an entirely unwarranted question. From an outside perspective, it would certainly make more sense for Ieva to be with Avery - with his long hair, gauged ears, and eyebrow rings - than with clean-cut John in his button-down shirts. But just because they liked some of the same shit didn’t mean he had some sort of claim on her. Ieva was tired of having to explain herself, and was finding herself in a truly bitchy mood.

“Well for one thing, he can actually make me cum,” she snarled.

Avery reeled back as though slapped. Expressions of shock, anger, and confusion warred on his face.

“But I–” he spluttered. “You–”

“I lied.”

She stomped away to the car, leaving Avery to gape like a fish out on the sidewalk as she threw herself into the passenger seat with a huff. John got in quickly after her and pulled away from the shop. Silence hung heavy between them as they came to a stop at a red light.

“You slept with him?” John asked.

Done, done, done. She was so done with men asking her questions.

“Don’t do this,” she begged wearily.

The light changed. John didn’t move.

“Light’s green.”

“Answer the question, Ieva.”

There was no one else in the lane to honk at them for not going. Where was a well-timed case of road rage when you needed it?

“Fine! Yeah. Avery and I fucked. Once. Like you were such a blushing fucking virgin before we met.”

John stepped on the gas harder than was necessary, throwing her back in her seat. His jaw was clenched, hands tight on the steering wheel. He took several sharp turns, then pulled into the parking lot of a shuttered warehouse.

“That was uncalled for,” he said, voice dangerously calm and even.

“I know.”

Ieva blinked hard. This was the part where he beat her to death and left her on the side of the road, she supposed. What a shitty week this was turning out to be.

From the corner of her eye, she saw John’s mouth quirk into a mean little smile.

“Wasn’t very good, was he?”

She barked out a laugh, surprising both of them. And kept laughing, until she was bordering on hysteria, yet more tears running down her face. God, she had never felt so miserable. She wanted to slam her head against the dashboard until she blacked out.

John’s hand closed over the back of her head, using Spike like a handle to pull her upright. Maybe he was going to initiate the head slamming for her. He did something much worse instead: he kissed her. And kissed her, and kissed her, with a fervor and a tenderness that she absolutely did not deserve.

“I know you’re scared,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to hers, “and I know you’re hurting. But it’s okay, because I love you, and I’m not going anywhere, even when you say things you don’t mean.”

There was that word again: love. What would he do when he found out Ieva couldn’t say it back?

“I’m not a good person,” she insisted.

“I know, but you’re mine.” He swiped a thumb over her damp cheek. “You’re so pretty when you cry-”

She choked on another sobbing laugh.

“-but I know you’ll be even prettier when you’re happy,” he finished.

Something twisted in her chest like a knife.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been happy, John.”

John was quiet for a bit. His hand curled over the nape of her neck, thumb absentmindedly stroking her throat. When he looked at her again, he was deeply serious.

“Am I important to you?” he asked, almost pleading.

Looking into his eyes, Ieva realized that John was also very, very scared. He just hid it better. She nodded, and watched as relief took over every line of his face.

“Take me home, John. Please.”

This love thing was going to be the fucking death of her.

[inastrangerskiss]

the last time

Tyler Rust x OFC

content warning: a little bit of angst, a little bit of fluff

His arms wrapped around her torso. His lips on her neck. His hands pulling hers across her body. She didn’t think this was where they would end up.

She could remember the day he left her. He had to find himself. He had to find some peace within himself. She was too busy. She was too regimented. She wasn’t free enough with her time or her plans. But a few years had passed. She had tried to be more open with her schedules, cutting back on hours at the shop, moving to a new place by the beach. She learned to take deep breaths. He became more tied up, working everyday, filling every free moment with workouts and matches, missing friends and lovers more and more often.

“Don’t go.” She whispered against his shoulder. It sounded the same as the first time she had dared to plead out loud to him.

The first time he responded: “It’s not forever.”

But he had packed his bags all the same and drove away.

The days after were difficult.

Not waking up in the same bed. She would roll over to his side hoping to find his bare chest, exposed in the morning light, his hair a mess under his head. Sleep would mark his cheeks, drawing lines across his skin. The coffee pot was empty and the living room was empty, no yoga mat on the floor, no books strewn across the coffee table.

He found himself hoping he’d open his eyes to see her aimlessly staring at the ceiling beside him, still wrapped up in the duvet regardless of the heat that had or hadn’t soaked the space overnight. He would take two mugs down from the cabinet, fill the coffee maker with two cups of water only to find a realization more bitter than the black water. No one reminding him to tidy up after his morning meditations, no one to put the books back on the shelf.

They saw each other a couple times over the years. She came to his match with a new man. He went to a bar with a new girl. But every time felt like the last time. Like the last goodbye and the last kiss before walking out the door. As if no time had passed at all. There was a tender sort of pain that echoed through the air. It would enter when the other did. Tyler could be on the other side of whatever space they were in and he’d feel it in the back of his throat. She would know when her chest began to ache.

Let it go she would repeat to herself. He was never really there.

The words would play over and over until she had finally made it back to the safety of the sidewalk outside.

The moment he saw her leave he was filled with a bittersweet relief, the sort that you find when something ends that you secretly wished hadn’t.

But two years passed and they made changes. Changes that affected themselves. Changes that affected others.

She walked to the store that morning, still in sweats, sleep encircling her eyes like rings on a well loved coffee table. He had realized he needed oat milk for his tea. He lingered in the dairy aisle for a moment longer than he had planned to. Maybe it was fate drawing their lines back together, maybe it was coincidence. But for the first time in a long time, when they happened upon each other that morning, bashful smiles crossed both of their faces. She made a comment about how she would’ve gotten more dressed up if she had known she was going to see him. He told her that she looked fine. What he couldn’t manage to get out was that seeing her, looking just as she had always, all those years ago, was more of a comfort to him than anyone could ever possibly provide.

They got to talking. It was casual but it was comfortable. She mentioned picking up baking as a hobby in her spare time. She explained how she had found it therapeutic, how it had helped her “center herself” - something Tyler was always saying she needed to learn how to do. They walked to the checkout islands together. He discussed how he needed to take some time off. He had been working nonstop and it was beginning to burn him out. He told her about the road trip he was planning to take in a few weeks.

A road trip he would never end up going on.

After they paid for their items, he walked with her back to her apartment. She invited him upstairs to have coffee. She had made too much and it was just going to go to waste. Tyler couldn’t argue with that sort of logic.

Coffee became lunch and when they finally parted ways, it felt less like it had every other time. It felt less like the end and more like a beginning. Less like a “goodbye” and more like a “see you soon”.

A few months passed. And there they were, his arms around her torso, his lips on her neck, his hands pulling hers across her body. They sat like this for what felt like hours. Nowhere to be. No one to go to. Just their bed, their pillows, and their bodies. And she turned, her head meeting his shoulder.

“Don’t go.” She whispered, hoping she didn’t sound the same as the first time she had dared to utter this sentence.

But this time was different. This time her words were met with a kiss to the crown of the head, and a tightening of the gentle grasp he had on her.

“I won’t.” He murmured into the dark. “Not this time. Not again.”

[inastrangerskiss]

boots

Tyler Rust x OFC

content warning: none just a good old fashioned hiking shop

summary: mel just wanted her day to end. then tyler showed up.

a/n: i wrote this before he was released and became taylor and i am too lazy to change all of the names

It was a normal Tuesday in the shop. The space was quiet, a few customers milling around, browsing the selection of hiking boots and carabiners. Locals hustled down the sidewalk outside, rushing through their lunch breaks, oblivious to the way the sun broke through the clouds, the way the light cast itself over the sides of the mountain in the distance.

Mel leaned over the checkout counter staring longingly towards those mountains, wishing the day would end and afford her the time to go for just one hike. Just one stroll through the trees, past the lake and into the hills.

By all accounts, it was a normal Tuesday.

And then he walked in.

He was unassuming, dressed just the same as any other customer. But there was something different about him, something intriguing. His hair was a shade of glittering blonde, half pulled back into a tiny bun. His shoulders were broad, his entire body sculpted by muscles. His glowing aura sucked Mel in, but she quickly shook herself free from its hold. She didn't have time to fall in love with every handsome nature bro that walked through the front doors.

He walked slowly towards her, a sense of confidence in his gait. Despite her better intuition, her heart began to beat wildly against her chest.

“Where might I find hiking boots?” He asked, leaning one arm against the countertop.

Without so much as a word, she pointed towards the racks of shoes against the far wall. The man stared at her for just a second too long and she felt sparks of electricity travelling down her spine. He looked to the shoes and then back at her before letting a gentle smile unwind across his face.

As he walked away and the distance between them grew she finally felt capable of taking a deep breath. She made a dedicated effort to keep her eyes focused on the computer in front of her as she checked on upcoming shipments and e-mail inquiries.

If she couldn’t see the man she couldn’t fall madly in love with him.

But the man had other ideas.

“Can I ask you a question?” He called over to her.

With a small sigh, Mel turned towards him. He was holding a shoe box in his hands but his face looked utterly confused.

“I hate to be that guy but I was wondering if you had the Salomon Xs in a size 11?”

His voice was soft and fully aware that his question was the bane of every retail worker’s existence. The gentleness in his tone was, in a word, disarming. Mel found herself forgetting the mental wall she had built so hastily upon first glance and warming up to him as she walked towards where he stood.

With her thumb pressed to her lower lip she studied the display of identical boots, quickly scanning over the boxes but not finding what he was looking for. She then browsed the surrounding displays, still coming up empty handed.

“It doesn’t look like it. What we have is what’s out here so we must’ve sold out.” She offered an apologetic frown.

“I get it. This is the third store I’ve tried today with no luck.”

They stood together silently for a moment before Mel pointed to a different stack of boxes. “You could try the new La Sportiva’s. They’re similarly priced and have a lot of the same features as the Salomons.”

The man walked towards the boots, picking one up in his hand and examining it from its different angles. Then he sat on a nearby bench, removed his current shoe, and tried the new one on. He stood and walked a few paces all while Mel watched on, blissfully unaware of any other customer in the store.

“How do I look?” The man asked, a goofy grin taking him over. “Think I could outrun a bear in these?”

Mel unleashed a sharp laugh before quickly covering her mouth with her hand. The man looked at her, amusement sparkling in his eyes.

“I don’t know if you’d outrun a bear but I’m sure you’d be a very handsome dinner.”

Blush crawled over the man’s cheeks but Mel couldn’t see as she looked down at her feet, embarrassed by the words that had spilled free of her. A comfortable tension built itself up around them - the kind that appears when there’s an inkling within the back of the mind’s of two strangers that something special has just begun.

“Eh, I don’t know. I think I’ll keep looking for the Salomon’s.” The man finally spoke as he sat down to unlace the shoes.

Mel wandered back to her computer, reluctant to separate from his intoxicating presence.

“Y’know,” She called over to him as she scrolled through her invoices. “I could order them for you. If you don’t mind waiting a week or so, that is.”

The man looked up to her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s no problem.”

He stood from the bench and approached her. The tension returned and an unfailing smile permanently etched itself over his face. He studied her face for a moment before giving a playful shrug.

“That’d be awesome actually.”

Mel nodded, tearing a piece of receipt tape from its machine. “If you don’t mind, write your number here and I can call you when they come in. I’ll order them now and I imagine they’ll arrive this time next week, give or take.”

The man did as told, writing out a series of numbers, in what could only be described as chicken scratch, and then writing the name Tyler at the top.

“Tyler?” Mel read it out slowly, trying to make sense of the impossibly bad penmanship.

Tyler nodded.

Mel then ripped off another piece of receipt tape and scribbled the shop’s number down under her name before sliding it towards him.

“Mel?” He read just as slowly as she had, mocking her inability to read his scribbles.

Mel laughed quietly. “Yes. You can use that number to check in on the order if I forget to call you or something.”

Tyler paused for a moment, staring at the paper. “And what if I wanted to call to ask you to get a cup of coffee with me? Is there a number for that or am I allowed to use this one?”

The pounding of Mel’s heart returned at a rate that threatened to crack a rib. Once more, sentence structure was at war with the signal overload in her brain. She tried to form something coherent but her bashful smile was working against her.

“Uh, I- I think it’d be the same number.” She finally murmured.

“Great.” He tucked his head down in an attempt to hide his own shy elation. Carefully, he folded the piece of paper and slid it into the pocket of his shorts. “It was nice meeting you, Mel.”

As he walked towards the front door, Mel found her voice. “It was nice to meet you too, Tyler.” He threw a smile over his shoulder before exiting, back into the open outdoors.

Mel watched as he walked up the sidewalk, stopping at the windows that resided beside the cash register, stopping so he was nearly right next to her once more. His back faced her though and she assumed he hadn’t realized how he had positioned himself. He pulled the paper free of his pocket and stared at it for a moment before pulling his phone out.

Before she knew it, the shop phone was ringing.

She picked it up, giving the standard greeting, unaware as to the person on the other line.

“Hey, uh, this really cute girl that works at this shop gave me this number to call in case I needed to get in touch.” The voice coming through the receiver spoke with a tiny shake, nervous excitement betraying its stability.

Mel turned towards the windows to see Tyler now turned around, looking at her, beaming like a golden retriever.

“Did she now?” She teased.

“Yeah and she said if I wanted to ask her out for a cup of coffee I could use this number as well.”

“Mhm.”

“I kind of want to ask her out for a cup of coffee.” He spoke with finality, sighing quietly as though he were finally free of a mounting burden.

Mel gained her composure, never breaking eye contact with Tyler through the windows. “She’d be happy to accept.”

“Cool, cool. Let her know that I’m really excited and I’ll come in tomorrow to figure out the logistics of this date.”

“I absolutely will.”

There was a significant pause as the two gazed out to one another, enraptured by the others' existence.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mel.”

Tyler’s voice was a warm comfort, a new reality that she was more than happy to sink into. She no longer wanted to quell the way she felt about him. Today was meant to be different.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Tyler.”