Two Outcasts in Love || Tylorpe

Ch 5: The Move-In

The first thing they did after outreach day ended was sneak into Tyler's house.

It was much easier than they thought because the Sheriff wasn't home. Xavier got to see the inside of Tyler's house, and he tried his best to absorb and remember everything about it because when was he ever going to be here again? It was surprisingly tidy, but it had a homey feel with mismatched wood and worn paint.

"I like your room," Xavier said, sitting back on Tyler's bed.

"It's not much," Tyler said as he grabbed some clothes out of a drawer, "But it's not a home," he said grimly.

The way Tyler talks about it makes Xavier's stomach drop. Where does he feel at home if not at his house?

Tyler packs a couple of bags, and they are bigger than Xavier expected. Either he can't stay away from his stuff for a few days, or he's expecting to be gone longer than Xavier thought.

When it's all packed, Xavier helps lug it all to the Nevermore bus stop.

Tyler feels strange standing in the open. What if a normie sees him? He feels like he doesn't belong and hasn't even arrived. He can feel the stress building up and drowning him.

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Sneaking Tyler into Nevermore proved a bit more complicated than they expected, and they were spotted almost immediately and sent to the Principal office.

Weems was not happy that a normie was here, but she was especially upset because he's the sheriff's son.

Tyler started with the truth. He tells Weems that he just needed a place to crash to get away from his father. However, this wasn't quite enough of a reason for him to be here, at Nevermore specifically.

Xavier picked it up where Tyler left off and pleaded Tyler's case as a non-normie. Maybe he wasn't an outcast in the typical sense, but what else is an outcast but someone who is being beaten up and shunned by normies?

This argument eventually won Weems over. More than keeping the peace with the sheriff, it's her sworn duty to keep students safe.

Xavier was glad because he didn't like his backup arguments. If that didn't work, he was going to say this was somehow an extension of outreach day. However, Xavier couldn't form the words 'outreach night' without sounding dirty.

However, this non-normie argument ended up working too well.

Instead of just letting Tyler crash for a few nights, Tyler quickly became enrolled as a Nevermore student. Tyler was given an official dorm room key and an assortment of magical passwords for the library, science building, and cemetery.

Tyler was wise enough not to ask why the cemetery needed a password to get out of it.

After all the paperwork was sorted out, Tyler gave Xavier a worried look on the way back to their dorm room. Was Tyler already regretting this?

When Xavier opened the door to their dorm, Tyler was shocked, "I knew that the whole place was weird and fancy. I just didn't expect to have such a big room. I mean, look at these ceilings." Tyler clutches a pile of uniforms to his chest and looks up at the wood-paneled ceiling.

"Yeah, I guess we got lucky. Not all rooms are as nice as this one." Xavier says, thinking of his friend Enid's room that's at least 50% splinters by weight. "And we have a private bathroom, which is super handy."

Tyler puts his things down gingerly on the bare mattress, "So, I guess I'm a Nevermore student now?" he says with a twinge of sadness and disbelief.

Xavier pauses, "Is that... ok?" he asks. He had asked multiple times before, but all of those times were with Weems in earshot, so the answer might be different now.