Evan hadn't realised Jared was there until the other boy cleared his throat. Looking up with the wide eyed start of a startled rabbit, Evan reflexively slammed his laptop shut. His breathing increased, making his chest heave for a couple of breaths before it evened out again. For those first few moments, he wasn't able to speak, because even though it was just Jared, he'd startled Evan and Evan needed a moment to calm himself down.
The comment that seemed to imply Jared thought he was looking at porn made Evan blush. He looked down, focused intently on his shoes. His fingers picked at the edge of the rubber sole, anything to deflect from the burning in his cheeks. But he knew he couldn't ignore Jared, ignoring him only made the taunting worse most of the time. It was better to suck up, or buck up, as his mom would say, and face his friend.
Because despite the taunting, Jared was his friend. It had started with something of an expectation. Their mothers were friends, and therefore there was an assumption that the boys would be friends because they were the same age. Jared was a bit hard for Evan to take sometimes. He could be loud, opinionated, and even sometimes crude and hurtful with his jokes and jabs. He didn't seem to understand Evan's anxiety made it hard for him to talk to people and the way Jared poked at him made him want to retreat further into himself. Or, on rare occasions, lash out in an attempt at self preservation that usually backfired but he kept doing it anyway.
Somewhere along the way, despite the awkwardness of Jared being in on the lie of Evan's friendship with Connor, and the fall out from that when Evan finally told the truth, Evan realised Jared was actually there for him. The consistency of Jared's taunting had served as a comfort to Evan, a sort of normalcy that helped him see that everything would be okay. Evan appreciated that more than he could ever say.
He caught his fingers in his shoe laces and looked up at Jared, finally, after a long beat. The way the light filtered in from behind the boy standing in the door frame made Evan feel a stirring deep inside, and he felt his breath hitch. He looked down again, focused on his shoe, and drew a deep breath. Releasing it through his nose, he looked up again, and gave a half smile.
"You know I don't...I don't look at, look at that stuff." Evan stammered. Because maybe he did look at it sometimes. It was readily available on Tumblr without having to go into actual porn sites, after all. Sometimes even a routine search could bring something up.