exsiliumlogs | how does i shot friendship

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how does i shot friendship

Date & Time: 7/23 during...the...day...
Location: wherever Lea happens to be
Characters: Lea and Marty
Summary: LERNING 2 FRIEND
Warnings: 8 billion Darkov apologies gosh how annoying

No more rain meant no more rainclouds. It meant the sun had a chance to creep out of hiding and remind many it was, in fact, still a summertime kind of month. It meant the search Martin was on was going to leave a lot of sweat on his back, and it made him more reluctant to keep moving forward.

Yet, from what he was getting from others, he ought to. Keep looking. Find his...friends. If that's what they were. Unless he'd already burned that bridge to ash with his missteps. How many times can someone hear no before it becomes a true no, anyway? What if he was just wasting his time?

Well, what else was he going to do?

Martin fell to skulking and slouching as he shuffled past people, becoming more conspicuous in his desire to be invisible. He just needed to find one person — one who out to stand out pretty quickly, given his look. And in all that daylight? Martin was certain he was liable to go blind finding him. But he had to. He had to try.

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With the sun reflecting off of red hair and an obnoxiously yellow scarf, Lea wasn't hard to spot at all. Going blind, though? That might happen. (Isa would have agreed.)

He hadn't had much to do -- and, more importantly, it was finally sunny again; he'd started worrying that he would mold if he stayed inside any longer. Sun, and warmth, found him in the corner of the market spinning one Frisbee around his finger as he basked. Nothing to do meant people-watching. People, Lea had found, were always interesting. Around here, they tended to be downright weird.

And he thought he recognized a particularly obvious guy ducking, weaving and effacing himself in the crowd. Speaking of weird (okay no that was mean even if Martin had cut him off they were still friends: right? Right.)

Right.

"Martin!" he yelled, catching the Frisbee midspin and waving it above his head to catch the other boy's attention. He hadn't seen him in ages. "Martin, hey! How've you been?"

Martin startled very obviously, his foot scuffing the last step as he halted, shoulders shrugging up and head ducking down. He was frozen, like someone caught in the act of sneaking somewhere he or she oughtn't. Silly reaction, of course, but there it was. Once the initial rush of adrenaline had cleared from his head, he quickly darted glances around, locking on the waving Frisbee and the boy who waved it.

That hadn't taken much time at all...!

Still, like a frightened animal, Martin was stuck in place for a length of time, considering what he ought to even do. Perhaps move? Or...answer the question? He gulped, straightening up, trying to swallow down the heatwave of embarrassment already upon him. He moved forward, because if he was going to talk at all, it wasn't going to be shouting and drawing attention to himself.

"Hel-hello," he stammered, coming to a very definite stop a few feet away. The address was more to Lea's feet than anything, though Martin was shooting quick, worried glances up, just waiting to find a bit of resentment or wrath waiting for him. He had said a great deal of no to all the kindnesses from before, after all. "Uh, I..."

All the things he'd been rehearsing in his head had decided to take a very quick and sudden vacation from immediate thought, and he was left stranded, staring down dumbly at the ground.

He went with his basics: "S...Sorry..."

Resentment wasn't on the menu, but Lea's smile was uncertain anyway. Half bright and sunny, because Martin hadn't fled, and was actually saying hi; the other half was what had him faltering, because while Lea figured they were still friends, he was not sure Martin would be any happier about the idea.

Maybe he should just take it easy, he thought, and stuck a hand out to shake. The 'sorry' hardly registered. It was basically punctuation, wasn't it? This was Martin he was talking to, after all....

"Good to see you!" he said, and leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspirator's whisper. "Hey, you don't have to talk to my feet. I mean, I know my shoes are cool and all."

A hand was thrust into his view, causing another start, which had Martin nearly bonking his head on the leaning Lea's on his way to straightening up. He blinked quickly a few times, unable to comprehend the remark right away. Shoes? Who was talking about shoes?

"Uh—"

He tugged at his own sleeve a little, feeling extremely on-the-spot and ill-equipped for it. What was he going to say? He'd expected to have to try and plead for— Oh. Right. That was it.

"N—no, I...I meant for...When I said I couldn't, and..." He trailed a little, giving Lea a wary, worried glance.

"You're...not mad at me?"

Lea stumbled back, windmilling his arms, as Martin straightened up fast enough to almost smack Lea in the nose with his skull. He dropped his arms back to his sides as soon as he was sure he wasn't going to fall over. Yep. Cool and suave, that was the ticket.

"Nah, I'm not mad."

He ruined it almost immediately with a grin, but that was, he decided, okay.

"So, does that mean you changed your mind?"

Still red in the face, Martin stared at Lea as though he'd become a talking donkey on two legs or something equally strange. It wasn't the flailing that caused it — that much was understandable in context. It was...everything that followed, really. The smiling, the dismissal, the...

Martin gulped with a dry throat. The question. Right. About friends and all those things.

"I..." His mind continued to be of little use, forgetting all those things he was going to say. All the rationale — what little there was untainted by his upbringing — had hit the road in a hurry in the face of the friendliness Martin was trying to accept. "I mean, I...Everyone else was...They said I should probably..."

As his response became empty air once more, Martin's expression dropped to a new low, unhappy with how he was performing. Helplessly, his shoulders rose and fell with a shrug as he shook his head.

"I just don't know anything about it," he admitted.

Man. Lea gave Martin the most encouraging smile he could manage. The guy really needed to lighten up. He looked like he was almost as upset about Lea not being mad at him, and where was the sense in that?

Nowhere. That's right. No sense at all.

Actually, Martin looked like he could use a hug, but hugging wasn't exactly a guy thing. Lea went for the second best option and gave him a gentle punch in the shoulder.

"Hey," he said. "Relax. It's okay. I can teach you all about being friends if you want! I'm an expert."

Lea's overabundance in cheer and confidence was the very thing giving Martin doubts. It was too much like Ivan back home; Ivan was notorious for talking out of his butt and putting on a confident air about it. Really, it was possible Martin wasn't so extremely gullible all the time because of his experience with the sort.

Unfortunately, it just made Lea less credible by an association he had no idea about and couldn't control.

Martin glanced at his shoulder post-punch, mouth tugging down farther on one side. He gave Lea the dubious look once more. Bariyan said there wasn't much you had to do, he thought.

"Um. Alright..."

Confident he might sound, but a little doubt was probably the best response to Lea's declaration. He might not know Ivan, but he had his own braggart side.

"Come on," he said, smile sidling a little closer to sincerity and further from the overconfident beam. "Don't look so freaked out about it.

"Having friends is a good thing. So - hey, Martin, if we're gonna be friends. What kind of stuff do you like to do?"

"D-do?" Martin echoed, thoughtlessly scratching at his elbow. The confusion remained, even as his gaze blanked out to try and consider a reply. "I...m'a Darkov. I just...I'm supposed to just kill monsters. That's it."

A whole lot of none of that had happened since day one in Exsilium, however, and that fact wasn't lost on him. His frown was a shade guiltier, more embarrassed than confused at that point.

"I, I mean. I guess just...training to do that. If I'm not doing that..."

"That's it?" Training to kill monsters and then killing them -- well. Okay. Lea was forced to admit that his first reaction was that's so cool; but then, he'd barely gotten to see monsters back home.

And he'd seen enough of Martin to bite his tongue before his first reaction made it out of his mouth, because getting to kill monsters was awesome, but if that was the only thing you were allowed to do and you couldn't have any friends? Less cool. Much less.

He scratched the back of his head, trying not to look concerned, and opted for an encouraging grin.

"So... you don't really know what you like doing except for that, right? Wanna try stuff and see?"

Martin's gaze drooped to the ground very quickly after Lea's remark, embarrassed. Saying it like that made it sound so...lacking. But really, what else was there? Some of the others would daydream and laugh about what it'd be like to do something else, but that was always just talk. It'd always just be talk. There were no other options.

There was no Exsilium over there, though. What did that even mean for him? Did it really change a thing? Again, he found himself struggling to figure out just where he stood between all the Darkov nos and all the Exsilium yeses. It almost threw him out of the conversation entirely; his head snapped up, eyes big, blinking and staring dumbly for the seconds after the questions.

"Try?" Martin's mouth tugging on one side. "Uoh, I...I don't know, if...that's what you want, then..."

"Well," Lea said, and shrugged, sliding his hands into his pockets and giving Martin another smile. "I mean. You never had a chance to do other stuff back home, right? We've kind of got a lot of free time here outside of what they want us to do.

"So maybe we could look around and find stuff to do, and you could see what you think is fun."

The point wasn't to do what he wanted. Not that he wasn't going to drag Martin along on the occasional adventure, but -- he could do that anytime, right? Martin, Lea was pretty sure, was the one who really needed to have fun.

"Alright..."

Martin looked far from convinced. He didn't have even a passing acquaintance with fun, he was sure. Fun? What was fun?

Not getting hurt. Not having to climb walls or ropes. Or do the endurance exercises. Or the sprinting. Or...

He grimaced at his own train of thought. Why not just say "everything about being me" in that case? And though he was sure it was terribly wrong, he was undeniably at Lea's mercy in the whole task of finding fun things.

"C'mon, relax." Lea tossed him a grin and looked around. "...Hey, want to go get lunch? There's a hamburger place that way. My treat!"

Having lunch out was fun, after all. Besides, he was hungry, and a friendship that was going to work out deserved a celebration.

"Uh, well..." Food? Whatever a hamburger was, it was food. That...wasn't bad. Right? "Al...alright."

He sucked in a breath to steel himself, nodding to cement his consent. He looked that way, as Lea had indicated.

"Great." He slapped a friendly hand on Martin's shoulder and pushed, steering the other boy toward the place he'd seen. It wasn't much, a lighted sign calling it Marie's accompanied by a drawing of a hamburger in bold blue and white, but the smell had made an impression when Lea'd walked past -- and less fancy signs probably meant not as expensive food. Right? He figured, anyway.

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how does i shot friendship

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