CATEGORY: Fluff
FEATURING: dating!Joshler
TRIGGER WARNINGS: None
PROMPT: In a world where your name appears on your wrist at eighteen, one boy never got his. Josh loves him anyway.
WORD COUNT: Approximately 1,390

"Hello, ma'am, is he home?"

The woman smiled kindly at the yellow-haired, hopeful-eyed boy on her doorstep. She nodded and stepped back from the doorway to invite him in. "Of course. Come on in."

He followed her inside, through the small living room and into the kitchen. "Can I get you some tea, Joshua?"

"No, thank you ma'am." The boy took a seat at one of the barstools.

"Please, call me Kelly. There's no need for all that formal jargon." The woman smiled kindly at Joshua again as she turned and left the kitchen. "I'll go let him know you're here," she called over her shoulder.

"Thank you." Joshua sat, and patiently waited.

He came here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Kelly would always let him in, and he would sit on this very barstool, maybe with a cup of tea if it was a cold day. Kelly would go upstairs and let her son know that Joshua had arrived, and after she returned, they would make small talk until her son scrambled down the stairs.

Joshua lived for the thump of the boy's feet on the wooden floor.

Right on schedule, Kelly returned and promised her son would come down from his room in a moment. The two of them chatted politely about the kind of things you would chat about with a neighbor: the weather, school, work, daily life.

Before too long, Joshua heard the quick, excited footsteps half-jumping, half-running down the stairs, and he got up from his barstool.

The boy he loved entered the room, and a grin lit up his face as he saw Joshua. It was warmly returned.

The boy grabbed Joshua's hand and started pulling him towards the back door of the house. "See you later, Mom." This was also typical.

"Be safe," Kelly called after the boys, a soft smile on her face as she watched the two young lovebirds.

"I'll have him back before dinner, ma'am," Joshua promised as the boy dragged him out the back door and down the steps.

The two boys lived in a world where names were incredibly important. On the morning of your eighteenth birthday, you would wake, and the name would be etched into your wrist. Up until that point, the people who loved you would call you brother, son, or friend. On your birthday, your name day, they would call you by your name. It was humanizing.

Joshua remembers his name day vividly. His parents were proud of his name; 'Joshua' meant 'salvation'. It was a strong name, for a strong boy.

There was a certain something about the boy Joshua was with, however, that made him very different from the other people in this world. On his eighteenth birthday, and every day since, no name had ever shown itself on his wrist.

The boy had never gotten his name, his identity, and for this reason, he was rejected by most of his peers.

That is, except for Joshua.

It had been a day much like this one, a long time ago. He'd been walking down the dirt road he lived on, trying to clear his head and enjoy the fresh air. He'd done this several times before, but on this particular day, something caught his eye.

A brown-eyed, brown-haired boy, peering curiously at him from the porch of a small farmhouse.

It was the first time they'd seen one another before. Some found it hard to believe that only a month later, they were sharing their first kiss on that same porch.

They'd been courting for about two years now. Joshua was twenty-one, while the boy was twenty, and pretty much everyone expected them to get married someday.

Joshua's parents weren't quite so pleased with this. They wanted Joshua to marry "a nice girl with a name", they'd said one night over dinner, without a trace of sweetener to their tones. This didn't faze Joshua, however. He was already in love.

They ran together, hand in hand, out into the forest beyond the boy's house. They spent almost all of their days out here. They'd climb a tree, or swim in the creek, or kiss in the small meadow not far from the property line. Today, they went to the meadow.

It was Spring, so the meadow was full of soft, green grass, and tiny yellow flowers. The two boys kissed for a little while, until they got tired. They ended up just lounging around, the boy resting in Joshua's lap, carefully braiding a crown of flowers and grass while Joshua played with his hair.

"You were late," the boy says finally, picking up a flower from the pile next to him and starting to weave it into the crown.

"I know, I'm sorry." Joshua lightly ran his fingers through the boy's hair. "Mom and Dad wanted to talk to me."

"What about?"

"The anniversary of my name day is coming up," Joshua explained. The anniversary of your name day was celebrated, often with cake, friends, and perhaps small gifts. Joshua's parents always made a big deal out of it. "They said you can come," he added.

The smile on the boy's face disappeared, and his hands stilled on his flower crown.

"What is it?" Joshua looked down at the boy with concern.

"I know you say it's not a big deal, but I wish I had a name."

Joshua had told him many times, whispered it in his ear and shouted it for the whole forest to hear, that it didn't matter if the boy had a name or not, because he loved him. The boy knew this, and trusted this. Still, it seemed, he felt left out, and Joshua wanted to fix that.

And that's when he got an idea.

"We should give you one."

"What?"

"A name." Joshua felt excited.

The boy looked puzzled. "How are we gonna do that?"

"We can think of some names you like, and make a list, and then you pick one that stands out to you."

The boy frowned. "But any name we think of will have already been taken before." He looked a little sad.

"So?" Joshua ran his fingers through the boy's hair. "You think there's never been someone named Joshua before?"

"There's never been a Joshua like you."

The two boys brainstormed, the boy doing most of the thinking, and Joshua writing down the names with the pen and paper he'd brought. They thought up names of people they had learned about in school, names from books and television shows, and names of old family friends. Finally, they had achieved what the boy deemed enough.

Carefully, the boy took the paper and pen in his hand. Joshua turned away; this felt like a private, intimate moment, and he wanted to let the boy make his choice without influence from anyone else.

He heard as the boy slowly crossed out names, until his hand and pen finally stilled. "Tyler."

"Tyler?"

He nodded, slightly uncertain. "Does that sound okay?"

Joshua moved closer, wrapping an arm around the boy's shoulder. "That sounds beautiful."

Then they shared a kiss, one so gentle and affectionate that the boy hardly noticed the cool feeling of the ink on his wrist.

Joshua pulled away, looking satisfied with the work he had done. "Tyler," he said, lightly holding the wrist of the boy, which now bore his name in the black ink of the pen, scrawled in Joshua's messy handwriting.

And Tyler smiled.