Valentine (troyler AU)

Chapter Twenty-One

edit: no, i didn't double update. i spelled troye wrong and got yelled at.

Tyler’s pov 

Shopping with Troye was a lot more fun than shopping in general. I always found my feet dragging sullenly across the floor as I forced myself to shove some grocery cart across the aisle as I stared at the shelves disinterestedly. Usually I’d grab the first couple of things I saw, heaving a sigh as I turned back around to slump towards the checkouts. It was even worse when my mom wanted me to go with her and I’d have to forcibly drag my protesting body around the store after her for what felt like hours. 

But with Troye, it was different. I found myself wanting to skip down the rows, repeatedly telling myself not to. I didn’t mind shopping with him, and instead of being bored I was having fun. Normally even the thought of shopping made me want to regurgitate whatever food I had in my stomach, but I would gladly volunteer to shop with Troye anytime. Plus there was the fact that he was so childish and cute, wanting me to push the cart with him on it.

It was difficult to see where I was going with Troye standing right in front of me, and we’d already bumped into multiple shelves, but I couldn’t find it in me to ask him to not stand there. Each time he shifted in front of me I could feel it on my chest. And my head was constantly poking around the side of him to see where I was going. Occasionally Troye would bounce on the balls of his feet, which only made it harder for me to see, although it was cute.

“Hey Tilly,” Troye said, spinning around on his toes.

“What?” I said, carefully slowing down the cart, not wanting Troye to fall off. I then stepped slightly away from the it so he and I weren’t so close. Despite my attempts, the cart began to tip anyway, and Troye’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. I jumped forward, reaching for the sides of the cart (and basically pressing my entire body tightly against Troye’s) and pushed it back down. Troye slid to the floor, gasping slightly from the panic.

“Be careful,” I said, slightly breathlessly. I couldn’t help but notice just how close Troye and I were. Troye couldn’t back up because there was a cart directly behind him, blocking his path, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t step to the side. And I had clear space all around me, I could step in almost any direction to get farther away from him, and yet all I wanted to do was step forward.

“I thought I had been,” Troye said, and I almost gasped. With each word my eyes were drawn closer and closer to his lips, before darting back up to his eyes. That wasn’t appropriate. I most certainly should not be looking at my best friends lips. Even if they were pink and looked soft. God, I knew they were soft. I knew how they felt against my lips, and all I wanted was to feel them again.

Suddenly, and irrevocably, Troye’s hands shot up to grip the sides of my face. I froze, unsure of what to do next. His hands were warm, a little bit sweaty. It reminded me of the first time I’d ever held his hand, the day I asked him to be my valentine. The day I made a best friend. Now I found the clamminess less gross, more as a sign of nerves, which I was glad he felt too. Although his hands were warm, the tips of his fingers were cold. It created a mixed sensation on my cheeks, and I was waiting for him to create a new one on my lips. Time ceased to exist; it became a figment of my imagination, a foreign concept. Seconds stretched to accommodate for days. There were 86,400 seconds in a day, and yet the next few seemed to last for years. My heart thudded away in my chest, ignored. Instead my attention was concentrated on Troye’s eyes and lips, his nose, his cheeks, his birthmark. I took a moment to appreciate the fact that no one was in the store except for us and the employees. It was with a sudden clarity that I hopped that Troye was feeling the same things that I was. Was his heart trying to rip itself out of his chest at the same time that it seemed to leap out of his throat? Had his stomach already dropped down to his feet, almost like he’d just driven down a particularly steep hill? Did his eyes manage to catch every detail, every piece of dust hanging in the air, every sound of the other’s breath? Was his mind reeling at a thousand miles per second, and yet time slowing to a stop? Or was I alone in feeling this?