maskormenacelogs | (no subject)

[It's a little astonishing to hear that Armin is, in fact, his neighbour; without his parents around, he's made absolutely no attempt to connect to anyone living in his general vicinity. He knows that his parents always liked to talk to their neighbours, to invite them over for a barbecue if they were new to the area, and to otherwise be nice, personable neighbours.

Jaime... not so much. Regardless, it's a nice surprise. Between Connor - Superboy - and Armin, they should really try for in-neighborhood hang-outs more often.

And, well, this is the first step. He's glad Armin's coming over. It seems like the poor guy could use a friend.]

[Armin's nervous. There are times here that he truly feels he's just ad libbing, doing the things he thinks he should do instead of genuinely working from instinct. Jaime has been kind to him, his strong morals and easygoing personality have all the good markers of a potential ally if things go bad.

He kind of hates that he thinks about people that way. But it's been useful to him thus far, the constant thinking, analyzing, suspicion. If he can let go of that, at least on the surface, then maybe he can make an actual friend. Not a fellow soldier, someone who owes him something, but a regular friend.

Armin hopes he doesn't look like the bundle of nerves he feels like as he rings the bell to Jaime's place. It might've been that he took a moment to thoroughly comb his hair, renew his deodorant, and throw on a vest over the simple black band T-shirt and jeans he'd been wearing. But he hopes that isn't obvious, either. He just wants to seem normal. He wants to make a good impression.

He rings the bell and fidgets with the thumb drive in his fingers, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

It occurs to him the cool thing to do probably would've been to tumble out the door like he didn't care at all, but it's too late now.

He's not very cool.]

[If Jaime looks like he didn't put any effort into his appearance before coming to answer the door, that's because he didn't; it's simply not something that occurs to him, save for if Traci's in town... and even then, she has an alarming tendency to arrive when he's a tad too busy to think about his appearance.

Still, he fails to notice Armin's manner of dress and nerves alike when he swings the door open with a smile.]

Hey, Armin. C'mon in - you're gonna stay for a while, yeah?

[It's not so much a question as it is an invitation, but the way Jaime's looking at him makes it clear that he's not expecting no for an answer.]

Oh - um, of course, sure... [It's not like he has a lot else to do. Armin enters the house. All of these houses have a particular smell about them, something stiff and new and clean. It's both familiar and otherworldly to him.

He holds up the thumb drive - a black plastic one, nothing special.] I brought this for you. [Armin says a little bit shyly.]

Hey, thanks. [Jaime takes the thumb drive, wiggling it a little between his fingers.] We'll have to give it a listen soon.

[Soon may, in fact, mean now - or at least once he's got Armin settled in. He begins to pad into the kitchen, gesturing for Armin to follow him.]

D'you like sweets? I think we still got a couple conchas I managed to hide from Kaidan.

I like conchas! [Armin smiles warmly, hoping that Jaime is able to produce some sweets. While he's has a more conservative tongue than someone raised in this place, he does like most of the food here, and he's gravitated to what's cheap and plentiful. When he first arrived, he even considered it a sort of obligation to eat as much as possible!]

Major Alenko won't let you eat it? Why not? [Armin's met Kaidan, and while he seems a little bit on the serious side, he can't see a downside to a sweet now and then. In fact, many people take some kind of pleasure in telling Armin he should eat more.]

[Jaime lets out a snort of laughter.] Man, if Kaidan tried telling me what I could and couldn't eat, there's no chance I'd actually listen to him.

[He likes Kaidan, he really does, but they operate so well together because the guy doesn't treat him as some kid. He doesn't doubt that if Kaidan had told him not to eat sweets, he'd eat a pound of them out of spite alone before getting magnificently ill.

The Scarab tells him what to eat, true, but in all fairness, the Scarab actually reads all of his biological functions. It has an excuse.

He leans over the counter and fishes out a slightly squashed box from behind the toaster oven.] He just has a big appetite, is all. Between me and him, food doesn't last around here for too long. [The conchas are, like the box, slightly squashed, but they'll taste the same. He grabs one for himself and slides the other across the table for Armin.]

Oh. I could see how that'd be a problem. [Armin takes a piece of the shell-shaped bread carefully, trying to be polite as humanly possible. It helps that his manner of addressing food could only be described as 'dainty' or 'careful', he eats slowly so his body knows he's taking in food, and he has time to enjoy it. Call it a habit of someone who's grown up with very little.]

This is so good! Thank you!

You're welcome.

[Armin's etiquette doesn't escape Jaime's notice. He's usually a pretty polite guy himself - around adults, anyway - but he figures Armin doesn't really need to be all that polite, not around him.

(It is kind of a nice change of pace, though, he has to admit that much; he's gotten used to Shinjiro and his surly stares or the speedsters' tendency to speak quickly, and eat quicker.)]

Y'know, I'm pretty sure that we can plug this thing right into the TV, [he says, picking up the thumb drive and heading into the living room. He eats some of his own concha as he walks, but needless to say, his own bites are far, far less dainty.] You mind if we check it out now?

[Armin glances around, stealing a paper towel to better protect the concha as he follows Jaime into the living room.]

Sure, but you might not want to have the volume too loud if it's going to bother anyone. I usually listen with headphones on unless I'm cleaning.

[The mix is something like this, with different selections of different genres of rock, but also a lot quieter songs.

Armin nibbles his snack, feeling oddly self-conscious.]

Eh, I'll turn it down a bit. I'm sure they won't really mind.

[Theirs is, happily, a fairly relaxed household; Jaime tries his best to stay considerate of his housemates, but he's certain that if it really bothers anyone, they'll just say so. He plugs the USB into the TV, flicks it on, and leans against the TV stand as he rips a piece of the concha off.

He can see why this is a little bit weird - the extent of his and Armin's relationship is floss and an unexpected confession via text. They're not exactly friends... but they could be.]

So hey, d'you go to that special imPort school, or the normal one? If you do go to school; I know a bunch of people who just dropped out.

[Armin opts to sit primly on couch, eating and being mindful of crumbs. He can't help it. Living with Levi will put a fear of bad-retribution upon anyone who dare leave even the slightest mess.] I'm going to the special one now. I attended public school briefly when I first arrived, but it didn't work out. I was suspended a few weeks before summer vacation. What about you? [Even though it's not really his business, he can't help but say:] I hope you're not planning on dropping out.

I'm not gonna drop out, but I don't really see what the big deal is.

[It would feel wrong, not going to school... and his parents would kill him if they ever caught wind of it. Still, he can see where the temptation to drop out comes from; it's not like they're going to be here long enough for their diploma to even mean anything, and it's not going to count back home.

God, he hopes they won't be here long enough for it to mean anything.]

What'd you get suspended for?

[Armin really, really doesn't look like the type to start any trouble meaningful enough to actually be awarded a suspension. He's having a hard time imagining it.]

Fighting.

[In retrospect, the situation was darkly humorous. It almost seemed worth it to have Levi come and sign him out of school, glaring and cursing the whole while.]

Technically, I was only defending myself a bully, but it doesn't look good when the other kid needs stitches. [Armin takes a thoughtful bite.] At the time I was thinking - just take him down and everyone else will know you're not worth messing with. Swift, decisive action. But I ought to have handled it better.

Well - swift, decisive action isn't exactly what everyone thinks of when they're dealing with a bully, [Jaime says, a mite thoughtfully.

He's never for violence, not the sort that puts people in the hospital, but he's in high school too. He gets how nasty it can get, sometimes.]

What did he do?

No. I spent a lot of my childhood trying to make bullies see reason, before I enlisted. [Armin shrugs.] ...People aren't reasonable, though.

He called me names, mostly, and shoved me sometimes. That day he refused to let me leave the bathroom - he kept blocking the way and making fun of me. It probably goes without saying he was bigger than me. Most guys are.

They can see reason sometimes.

[But not all the time, no - Jaime knows that personally. He swears he spends half of his time in uniform asking people to see reason before giving up and punching them. Punching is certainly the easier option available to him, but he'd just feel awful resorting immediately to violence.

Being a man isn't about knowing how to fight, mijo, his father says. It's about knowing when to fight. He believes that.]

You're right; you could have handled it better. [He concedes with a nod. There's no point in him pretending he feels otherwise.] But I can get why you did it. You're not running into anyone trying to hassle you over at the imPort school?

[Teenagers are teenagers, no matter where they are, after all.]

Do you really get it? [Armin furrows his brow, giving Jaime a long once-over. He turns over several phrases silently, his tongue working against the rough of his mouth as he rejects each possible line of conversation.] I thought I didn't have a problem with being hated. [Armin traces a finger over the back of his hand, his wrist, his collarbone, revisiting ancient injuries, scars nearly-faded or entirely invisible, seeming to grow smaller, more defensive as he shrinks into himself.] But I'm used to being looked down on for my opinions, for my choice to join the Survey Corps. Even if it's wrong, I understood why they did. Someone making others miserable over things they can't change, for things that shouldn't matter but for some reason matter so much to some people here... [Armin abruptly remembers the food in his free hand, and begins to studiously fold what's left of it into the paper towel he'd cradled it in.]

It's unjust. I wanted to put an end to it.

Okay, [Jaime admits.] Maybe I don't get it. S'not like we come from the same place.

[If he said that he's never been picked on before, he'd be lying - and if he said that he couldn't see what an easy target Armin would be, he'd be lying about that too. Jaime's short and skinny and a grade-A dork, but he's always been good at escaping people's notice, and when he hasn't...

Well, being friends with Paco has more perks than the fact that Paco's the best friend a guy could have. He's nice, but he's also roughly the size of a truck; nobody wants to mess with him or his friends.]

People where you're from don't pick on other people for stuff they can't control? 'Cause where I'm from, it's... a lot like what you had to go through. Maybe you're short, or skinny, or fat, or too brown, or - heh - not brown enough.

[It's not right, but it's normal.]

[Armin stares at the sweet in his hand, now neatly wrapped in a paper towel for safekeeping.]

Being a heretic, speaking my opinion - my parents were the same, so... Even if I denounced them, they might've just put the focus on my being their child, instead of at my words. So maybe it was only in my mind I had any control over it at all. [It wouldn't be the first time Armin looked into the past and found a way to blame himself.] But I always thought, you know, if one of these guys is going to shatter a couple of my ribs, at least I'll get a word in edgewise about it. At least they'll know they haven't changed my mind, no matter what the punishment. When we were refugees, people did hate us for no reason. Because we were poor and had nowhere to go. People cared so little for refugees that no one batted an eye when thousands were sent to be slaughtered. Everyone was just glad there was more food to go around.

[Armin swallows.]

But it wasn't like that in training. The truly weak people quit, were too injured to continue, or even died. Even if I'm not um, what people would call a great athlete - I still survived it. And I had friends [a bitter little smile, because he wants to say Reiner] who wanted to help me.

We were all in it together. Nothing else mattered.

But I don't know. I've - changed a little, since that happened.

I still think it's wrong, but it wouldn't shock me now that someone might assume certain things just by looking at me.

[Jaime pushes off the television stand with his foot before padding quietly over to the couch to sit beside Armin as he talks. When it comes down to it, he has no way of truly grasping him or anything he's talking about, but if there's one thing he can do, it's listen. Hearing someone his age - or younger, he thinks to himself - speak so bluntly about matters that are far, far beyond his own personal reality is startling to say the least. It doesn't seem real, somehow, when people from Armin's world describe the devastation of their world, or when Ellie speaks of a galaxy ravaged by a single force.

It's the same thing he did for Brenda, back before La Dama permanently took care of that little problem. So when Armin speaks, Jaime simply sits quietly, hands resting on his knees, and waits for him to finish his piece no matter how much he may want to react to one thing or another.]

I'm sorry you had to go through that in the first place, [he says, and if Armin had harboured any doubts about Jaime's earnestness over text, it's just as audible in person. What else can he say?] And I'm sorry they've been giving you a hard time here too, of all places.

[Jaime would think that schoolyard bullies would be nothing, after all Armin's been through, but he can't say that he can understand what it's like, not in the slightest. He sets his own sweet down onto the coffee table (though it is bereft of the protective covering of Armin's).] And don't get me wrong - just 'cause it's normal here, or anywhere doesn't mean I think it's right. Not that you need me telling you that.

[Armin looks away a moment. He's close to tears and while he doesn't really care if Jaime sees them, he gives himself a moment to breathe and composes himself.

Jaime is really, really nice. Maybe he's just a little bit worried about that, for some reason. It sort of makes his stomach hurt.

Or that could be the delicious concha, full of sugar as it is.]

Now... I don't think it's nearly as absurd as I did then.

[Wiping the corner of one of his eyes with his fingertips, he rights himself, looking at Jaime.]

For me, it's been quite a long time since it happened - way more than two months.

[Oh no, Jaime thinks once he notices Armin's tears, wondering if it's best to keep asking questions, or to just shut up. He had hoped to listen to some music, maybe play a round of driving games or two, but either he has the knack for asking the wrong questions, or Armin really needed to vent in person.

In any case, he gets up from off the couch to grab the box of tissues sitting on the table before returning, setting the box between them as unobtrusively as possible.] Here.

[Somehow, he doubts that Armin's crying about those schoolyard bullies.]

Oh, so -- you went back home.

[Many regard that as a good thing - Jaime certainly does. Sometimes, lying in bed, all he thinks about is what he'd do if he got just a day back home, what he'd say, who he'd see.

He knows that's not the case for Armin.]

How long were you gone for? From your perspective, not ours.

I got back in July. Just before those three made that post, actually.

[Armin's attempted to cope with the fallout of his return here - and his experiences back home - by seeking out information, namely from people he knows to be more experienced in war than the is. Every adult he's reached out to has given him the same advice: Just keep going, soldier on.

Slowly, slowly he's tried to put himself back together, with feeling as if he might crack and shatter from the guilt of not healing at the proper speed. Since then, he's isolated himself from his two friends that do care, who do acknowledge how wrong it all is, because he fears his own words, the uselessness of them.

It's only through the generosity in spirit he's seen in others - namely Jaime and Skye, since he's returned, though he thinks on those who listened before he left, too - that has given him much hope for himself. If not an answer, at least a distraction.]

It feels like years, so much has happened. It was... many months for me.

I - [Armin takes a tissue gratefully, though at this point he's just fidgeting with it in his fingers, twisting it around.] I probably shouldn't start in on it... I only just got my head on right about the whole thing.

Edited (chronology!) 2014-09-27 04:52 (UTC)

You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.

[Armin knows that already, but Jaime feels like he ought to say it anyway. He knows he's a naturally inquisitive sort of person, and he has a tendency to ask questions that people don't necessarily want to give the answers to, and he doesn't want Armin to feel obligated to talk about anything.

When he thinks back to asking tough questions, he can't help but feel astonished not only at the breadth of the horrifying pasts people in this place seem to have, but at the strength and kindness they manage to maintain throughout it all.

He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped lightly together as he looks over at Armin.]

But I always figured that talking about stuff is how you, uh - [he pauses, then borrows Armin's phrasing] - get your head on right about anything eventually. Nothing saying you gotta do it now, though. I think it takes a little more time than that to get over anything bad.

[It's a little amazing how much he leans on his mother and father, even here. Whenever he's dealing with anything, or trying to help anyone else, he seems to think back to what they've told him, again and again.

He is never going to tell them that.]

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ARMIN

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mentions of violence in this tag / major spoilers

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