wistful

Frustration- Original Characters

note: the picture for this oneshot is from a comic (i'm not sure which one) by danielmolin on deviantart, it's not mine. it's also not really how i personally picture these characters, but it's all up to your imagination! i do really like the comic, though, and the concept is kind of what i was going for here. hope you enjoy! also, please comment if i've made a grammar or spelling mistake. i don't proofread and i want to fix it.

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tyler stared at her from across the table. she had her eyebrows crinkled, and was glaring at the board in the front of the room with intense focus and confusion.

tyler traced the lines of her face with his eyes. her wavy, light brown hair glinted like the path of a flashlight in a dark alley. her eyes, a cross between light green and dark brown, moved at a quick pace, trying to absorb all they could. she bit her lip, thinking, and tyler lost himself in a daydream.

she wrote her name in loopy, carefree letters at the top of her paper, seemingly giving up on listening and drifting off herself. lily ralston. tyler thought even her name was special.

he didn't know what he wanted from her, but he thought about her often. they could speak over text fairly well, but in person, she avoided eye contact and never approached him. he didn't know what to do, so he let her be.

little did he know, lily's nerves caught up with her in person, and in fear of slipping up around him, she bit her tongue or walked away.

tyler's eyes dropped down to his paper, scribbling numbers and formulas to remember.

as he regained focus, lily glanced up. his cobalt eyes always snared her into another wild train of romantic thought. sometimes she caught him looking at her when she was working on something else, and to watch his reaction, she would sometimes look up knowingly and half smile, then refocus. seeing him flustered made her smile, as he had a very flattering blush. other times, when he looked down, she would dive into his entire being and imagine what she would say if she wasn't so nervous.

she pictured walking towards him without tripping, without cracking her voice, without turning bright, fiery red. she would tell him how she didn't know what she wanted or how she wanted to do things, but she knew that she thought about him all the time and couldn't forget every little thing she loved about him. she wasn't in love, but she had fallen hard and didn't know where to go from there.

lily wanted to tell him so terribly, but what if she messed everything up? she didn't want to lose him. no, better to pine from so far away but not really so far after all.

tyler wanted to tell her how much she meant to him, how he knew they had entirely different interests, different personalities, different friends, different minds, but they somehow worked. she was his friend, but couldn't she be something more? he had no experience in this sort of thing, and he knew she didn't either, but he wanted to figure it out with her by his side.

occasionally, a mutual friend would shoot them a look that caused one or both of them to burst into flames, or someone would remark on how "cute they'd be!", only to see them giggle and shrink into themselves.

if only they knew how right they were. lily couldn't tell tyler, and tyler couldn't tell lily.

every time lily thought she had it figured out, she'd mess it up again.

picturing the time she asked him to the end of school dance and got paint all over herself after running after a friend and tripping over a paint can, she shook her head, blinked hard, and pressed her pencil point into the paper. she absolutely did not want to think about that.

tyler, meanwhile, was thinking about how impressive it was to watch her work out a problem in her head. he would watch the confused look on her face as her eyes dashed back and forth over the situation, the slight bite on her lip, and the nod on her head that showed she had come up with at least the first step. sometimes, she couldn't work it out, and would sigh in frustration, raise her eyes, and roll them towards the ceiling as an act of small surrender.

tyler smirked, remembering when he had caught her trying to figure out what to write for an english prompt they had. he had lifted his head and pushed up his glasses, watching her. she was staring at her paper like she wanted to burn a hole in it. he couldn't imagine why, she was talented with words. as he amusedly watched the gears in her head spin, the epiphany hit her. her face lit up, and she leaned over the paper and hurriedly wrote the rest of her story.

tyler was so glad when she volunteered to read her out loud. he sat in his chair, stuck between floating up to the clouds and sinking into the ground. she had written about a clock, of all things. it was obviously written quickly, but he could tell from the quiver in her voice and the gestures she made with her hands that she could spin a real story about the clock that sat above her closet. tyler remembered feeling an elbow jab into his side and being jolted back to reality. his friend smirked at him deviously, raising his eyebrows and pointing a thumb towards the girl of tyler's affection. tyler rolled his eyes and sunk into his seat, pretending to read, but still listening, enthralled by her voice, her mind, her whole being.

tyler grinned fondly at the memory and snuck one more look across the table to his... lily. he knew that one day he might be able to work up the courage to have a real talk about how they felt, but that wasn't today.

the bell rang, and lily grabbed her things and swiftly escaped from the classroom. tyler watched her leave with a not so subtle look of frustration pasted on his face.

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