2020-01-02: Leisure Time is Leisure Time
- Log: Leisure Time is Leisure Time
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Loren Voss
- Where: Meria City - Central Commercial District
- Date: January 2, 2020
- Summary: Lan wants to go out on a day off, and surprisingly, Loren readily agrees to go with her. She soon finds out why.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Leisure time is leisure time - as in, precious and must be savored at all costs. And you can't stay depressed forever, no matter what kind of horrible things are happening in/to your brain. Thus it is that Lan Lilac and Loren Voss have left the stifling monotony of base life for the much less stifling and hopefully more exciting environment of Meria City.
Lan hasn't been here in a while, but she remembers there being a decent enough assortment of shops all over the place.
"I was thinking. Maybe a little rug, and another blanket to put on the wall. That ought to soften the place up..." Babbling on about pointless things... It's good to feel normal for a while. If she keeps this up, maybe she'll forget. "And you said you wanted something too, right?" It's probably why he'd agreed to come with her in the first place.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
More usual, on his days off, Loren tends to keep to himself. Reading this or that, or idling with a deck of cards, or sometimes, just sleeping.
But when she'd asked, he'd agreed without any of his usual hedging or reluctance. Perhaps, he has at last seen the limitations of a life spent holed up on his days off and is out to become a real human at long last? Or maybe he's finally decided to add a little color to his living quarters and/or office?
So they'd gone off to Meria City, it being perhaps a little more lawful than the closer Damzen City.
To him, it's rather relative, but then again, he did get knifed in Damzen so that's a mark in Meria's favor.
She talks about this and that as he roams a short distance ahead, his attention rather much elsewhere.
Very much elsewhere, when he approaches a nearby stall and gingerly tugs out the sleeve of a hanging jacket, turning it this way and that as if to inspect its make.
"...Uh," he utters after a moment, perhaps realizing she was talking to him. "Did you say something?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Maybe he really wanted to get out into the sunlight and breathe real, unrecycled air!
Yeah, and maybe Lan's a chocobo's uncle.
Even so, it was pretty novel to not have to cajole him into participating. She'll take what she can get. "Nothing important," she humphs upon realizing that he really isn't paying attention. What's more interesting is his unusual interest in, well... anything as impractical as clothes. Lan's never known him to care much about fashion! Or even 'normal levels of self expression via clothing choices'.
He stops to look at something a bit closer and Lan joins him. It's a nice enough jacket, she guesses?
"I was just asking what you wanted while we're here in town. You never really said. Was it new clothes?" That's... unusual, is her unspoken and fairly diplomatic opinion.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Perhaps this part -- where he sort of seems to tune her out and drift in his own private world -- is not terribly unusual. Get him on the right topic and he'll (sometimes self-righteously) go off for minutes at a time. But the rest of the time he's just quiet.
He glances away from her, lapsing into a nearly audible sort of silence.
"I was... thinking," he says at length. "That... yeah. I should find some new clothes."
Loren glances down at himself, at the recovered shirt and jacket he'd managed to, after a fashion, clean and stitch back together following that time she'd had to cut it off his body. He'd done his best with the stitches -- and compared to flesh, sewing together cloth was easy -- but it's still not precisely what it once was. A neat line traces down the front if you know where to look.
"I mean, I have other clothing." Not just his uniform and battle armor, but actual surfacer-style clothing. "But I wanted something more..."
He trails off after that, glancing at the clothing rack as if it held the mysteries of the universe.
His silence lingers for a good long moment, a casualty of whatever internal debate is currently raging.
"...more impressive," he settles for, not meeting her eyes. His face colors, as if he'd given up an enormously embarrassing reason.
"And don't laugh," he adds after a moment, still not looking at her.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
(She was honestly very impressed when he sewed his jacket back up.)
But... what's impressive to her isn't probably the kind of 'impressive' he's thinking about. Since when has Loren ever cared about impressing anybody?! Except his bosses, who probably won't be swayed by a snazzy new outfit. "Why would I laugh?" Lan asks. S-sure, she might do that nervous/awkward chuckle thing from the sheer unusualness of it, but--!
"No wonder I didn't have to try to get you to come out today," she nods as things start to make a ittle more sense. "Well, what kind of impressive are you going for?" She reaches past him and tugs the jacket out to take a better look at it. "Like... in general? Or more specific? You've got your fancy uniform, right?" She means his dress uniform.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She asks why she'd laugh.
He still, it seems, can't bring himself to look her in the eyes.
He stays like that as she moves to investigate the jacket more closely, as if he had become transfixed to the spot. He takes a breath as she asks him.
Impressive in what way?
In general? Or--
It feels like something in him cracks in that moment. Or, perhaps, becomes overwhelmed, rock drowned under a sudden flood of water from a storm? He lifts his head and his gaze catches that of the stallkeeper and that, in that moment, is far too much. He grabs for Lan's hand and moves to pull her along with him, moving onwards and away without real intent or purpose.
Except for 'away'.
"There's..."
Loren really only answers her question once they've put distance between that stall, once they've found a little alleyway where he can lean against the wall and take the breathes he needs.
"...There's someone I like."
You're an idiot, the inner voice speaks up. Can't even go shopping for clothes without having an episode. It's no wonder you--
But there are some blows which he won't even permit himself to drive home and he snaps away from the thought before it can complete. He takes another breath instead and pulls off his glasses, rubbing his face with his hands.
"...You said you wouldn't laugh," he mumbles, through his hands, assuming an at least partway defensive now here. "So-- so that's it. Is that good enough for you?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
If she'd had any idea what it would sound like to him, she never would have said it. Lan's more invested in checking out the details of the jacket that had caught his eye when Lan feels his hand on hers. "?" She manages to catch the barest glimpse of his face before he's tugging her away, breaths coming shorter and faster.
Oh.
He finds the slim space between buildings, and Lan positions herself between him and the main street to let him catch his breath in some semblance of privacy. "...You're okay," she tells him quietly. She knows he doesn't want to hear it, but it's in her nature to say it anyway.
"I laughed because I didn't know what to say!" she protests mildly. "It was a little awkward!"
Lan can kind of understand -- sort of -- why he's upset. Normal human emotions that aren't frustration or boredom or total disdain are kind of treacherous footing for Loren. To think of him having a crush on someone is.... well...
Honestly kind of adorable and really pretty hope-inspiring, if she thinks about it. "Why does it have to be 'good enough' for me?" Lan asks, as patiently as she can manage. "It's a big deal to you, isn't it? It's your somebody." Uh, speaking of which... "So... who is it? Do I know her?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He's okay, she affirms.
In another situation perhaps he might have offered up a retort. Here, he just nods, trying to steady himself and at least doing better than that time on the beach of an island that wasn't supposed to exist, when he had come completely unwound thanks to the drugs he'd taken.
If she had to sing to him again this time, he might have tried to have died on the spot sheerly on principle.
She insists that she only laughed because she didn't know what else to do. That it was awkward. That it was just...
"You wanted to know. So I told you. Are you happy now?"
It's nothing but naked defensiveness at this juncture, an attempt to regain what tatters remain of his pride after bolting like that.
'It's a big deal to you, isn't it?'
At least he seems to be listening to her -- her words seem to have some sort of mollifying effect, even if his body language remains guarded. At least he slowly lowers his hands from his face, though his glasses remain dangling from his right hand.
Loren looks over at her for a long moment. Then:
"They," he corrects. He'd... made a somewhat different mistake at first, himself, as well. But he'd corrected it himself soon enough.
"Anaitis. In engineering. I was-- they came along on the Colshrie expedition." Pause. "They're, uh, being moved to field work but they were, uh, nervous about it. So I thought I'd, and then we--" He stops himself again, after that, the color in his face darkening further. "Why... why am I telling you this," he mumbles, glancing away. "L-look, I just thought, maybe... if I looked a little better..."
But his shoulders slouch and he pulls a face mere seconds afterwards that, perhaps, speaks to the great undertaking that might be.
(particularly if he keeps making faces like that one)
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Well, is she happy now? "Uh... I think?" Lan replies. She's not even sure anymore!! "I'm happy for you, at least."
When he says 'they', her eyes widen. It might look like she's shocked, and she kind of is... After al, he's got a crush on two people at once? Are they a couple? Does she know them? Are they---
They're not a couple. Lan's eyebrows return from their temporary home near her hairline. "Anaitis. Anai... I don't think I've ever met them." She'd remember a name like that, and probably also that she'd met someone who is they.
Can his face actually get any darker? What if he bursts a blood vessel?! Hadn't he said that tht's a thing that happens sometimes?!? Lan raises her hands, palms out to try to calm him down a little. "You're telling me because I asked, because you were doing something a little different and I wondered if you had something on your mind!" Jeez, are all nerds this prickly or is he just a special case?! But she eventually lowers her hands and purses her lips instead, eyes narrowed in thought. "You already look fine. Besides, you're doing the most important thing. You're thinking about their feelings. That's not small stuff." That's the most important stuff of all!!
Loren's probably not going to see it in those terms, though. Lan leans against the wall near him, thinking. "Honestly, probably the best thing you could do would just be to smile more. If you want help finding nice clothes we can try that too." See, she's helping.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He seems taken aback by that.
That she's happy for him, apparently.
Lan works to untangle what he means by 'they' -- while he just sort of regards her bemusedly -- until realization (once he explains further) takes hold.
"Probably not. You might have seen them once or twice on the Tzadkiel. That was their previous assignment, before..."
But Anaitis had survived. That was good... And-- even if he hadn't had the guts to do or say anything back then, now...
He's running out of time now. There's not much left to him before...
Before?
He abandones the thought; he doesn't chase it down.
Particularly when he rambles a bit when trying to explain things and ends up defaulting towards defensiveness again while Lan once more attempts to defuse the situation.
Maybe on some level he's aware that he's not quite in the right on this, since he starts to relax some of his semi-defensive posture against the wall.
Well-- sort of. He does slide a disbelieving gaze her way when she says he looks fine, but perhaps for the sake of his ego he doesn't push back.
"Their feelings, huh... I don't..." He frowns, as if in thought. "I don't really know... what to do."
He pulls away from the wall here and gestures, unfolding his still tight body language further as he indicates himself, perhaps. "With any of this," Loren adds, averting his gaze. "I didn't really-- I mean, other people have by twenty-one, right? And I haven't."
She suggests he should try smiling more. "...Really? Just smile?"
When he thinks about other people he's liked he doesn't think about their smiles. It's their confidence. They way they dress. The way they look. Their bodies.
The way they cut their own paths through life rather than getting pushed along without a say in the matter. The way the world looks to them instead of crushing them in its wake.
Or that's how it looks, to him.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The Tzadkiel. Then Anaitis had been on the ship when it crashed? They must be gods-blessed, Lan thinks privately, to have survived that. Maybe their good luck will rub off on Loren a bit.
Other people have, he indicates with a deliberate vagueness. Lan blinks twice before she really gets it, but she doesn't gasp and cover her mouth in shock or dismay, doesn't gloat or giggle at him for being so far behind his peer group.
It's Lan. Is there any parallel universe where that might've been in the cards??
"Oh. I guess most people?" she hmms, very carefully looking at 'the opposite wall'. It had just... never been on her list of things to do. "I mean. I haven't either so it's not like you're alone. And maybe Anaitis hasn't! You could be awkward together!"
Lan, STOP HELPING.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To be more precise, he was one of the lucky ones to evacuate before it crashed -- after the fact there were no survivors anymore. But even those few who managed to escape had a hard road of it. Siegfried had meant to kill them all and had done his best.
But on the subject of 'other people have' in the meantime, Loren is deliberately woefully vague.
To be fair, the line of thinking Lan thinks he's getting at isn't a misstatement either. It is, to be blunt, hard to get laid without the date first.
Which means that it takes him a moment to realize that she's taking this in a rather different way than how he meant.
"Yeah. I never... really connected with anyone else," he says, phrasing the 'social pariah because I killed my classmates' part as delicately (for his own sake really) as he can.
'I haven't either so it's not like you're alone.'
'And maybe Anaitis hasn't!'
It's his turn to blink, turning this one over in his mind. Wait, so neither of them--
Wait.
Horror -- or maybe just embarrassment really (it's just embarrassment) -- creeps over Loren's expression. "T-that's not what I meant! Listen, I just haven't-- I've never asked anyone out, got it?!"
Though it again doesn't actually preclude the rest of her assumption to be true, as noted before.
He meanwhile looks like he just wants to crawl into a hole and die. How did he get into a conversation with her over this anyway--
Oh right, because he doesn't have anyone else at all to ask about this stuff. He'd rather go into this whole relationship business blind than ask Leah, after all.
Asking her for any sort of advice on his personal life would be a special place in hell, just for him.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
That's not what he meant? It's Lan's turn to go a bit flushed when Loren hurries to inform her that she's jumped ahead, so to speak. "I-- Oh. Well, it's not like... you know, it's not like you need tons of practice to say, 'hi I like you, want to go for a walk or something'!" Even Lan knows that sounds lame, but he started this doomed train of conversation.
"I've never asked anybody out either, but it's probably just... pretty basic, right? I mean people have been going on dates for at least hundreds of years! If it were super hard to go on dates, humanity would be over!" Lan may be ascribing a certain level of defeatism to the human race as a whole, but the logic is pretty sound.
She looks away from him towards the mouth of the alley. What kind of advice is she supposed to give him? It's not like Lan has much more experience than he does, except for 'having drinks offered at saloons'. "...You could make sure you've both had a drink before asking?" she offers, even though she's pretty sure Loren won't go for it. "Or... you know what, let's try the 'new shirt and a sincere smile' approach. That has to work!"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's a doomed, runaway train of a conversation. Going over a cliff.
It's his turn to flush red -- redder than before anyway. "I-I know that! It's just... it's complicated, alright?!"
To start with, he's not sure /what/ he's going to do with himself if he strikes out. He's nursed a careful crush on the engineer for a while now. --Or if, worse, Anaitis doesn't want anything to do with him anymore because he went and made it weird. And that's even before he gets into his own history -- or the social/organizational concerns at play.
He's always been sensitive to rank. He hasn't missed the fact that he's a captain and Anaitis is a lieutenant. From different organizations, sure, so it's not the same thing as him dating one of his own subordinates. But he has a precarious position, and the last thing he wants or needs is to cause an incident. Some things, even Leah can't bail him out of.
...Probably, anyway.
"I'm just," he says, looking away from her again. "I'm just trying to figure what I want to do. --No, I'm absolutely not taking them out for a drink!" It seems like a disaster waiting to happen!
Maybe it'll fail. Maybe it's not going to go anywhere. But he's already decided that he can't afford to wait and hope anymore; he's running out of time. And at least if he tries and fails, he'll know he tried. And in a way that would be an answer to something else he's been wondering secretly for a long time.
He pulls himself away from the wall, gathers as much of himself together and straightens his posture. "...Alright. Just a little change of clothing and a smile, huh. ...I guess it's worth a try." It's not going to get him in trouble with anyone if he does ask the engineer out on a, a, not a date, a...
An outing? A walk?
"Maybe you can help me find something good. I don't really know what works." He gestures at himself; this outfit is probably the most flattering thing she's ever seen him wear (largely because it was actually tailored and isn't some godawful attempt at pretending to be a scholar or something). But it's still 1) undergone a repair job 2) just the one outfit and 3) not something he picked for himself anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Whereas Loren has given this sort of subject plenty of obsessive thought, Lan's concerns about dating have mostly been organized around 'how to avoid it'. Technically speaking, Loren probably has the more expertise out of the two of them; he's sure to have read at least one geeky how-to-date guide at some point!
But Lan is nothing if not willing to emotionally support a friend, and she's sure it's not really as difficult as Loren expects it to be, either.
And then they're back onto the safe(r) subject of clothes, thank the gods. "I'll totally help you find a new outfit. That shouldn't be too hard!" After all, he has a normal-shaped body. No Beastman extras, no Metal Demon shapeshifting. How hard can it be to find a nice shirt for Loren Voss, Average Human?
She stands up straight, dusting brick dust (real or imaginary) off of her clothes. "You know, you'd probably look great in blue. But not too much. You just want to bring out your eyes. As for the rest..." He's a little too pale for earth tones. Maybe something gray. She shrugs, feeling a bit optimistic.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
This much is true. But Loren being Loren means that no matter how much he might (obsessively) plan and plot out an approach, it still doesn't make it any easier for him. At the end of the day, perhaps what he needs is a good kick in the pants and, above all else, a little bit of a confidence boost.
Like a nice shirt or jacket?
Which at least is simpler ground than 'what do I say' or 'what do we do' or anything of the like -- all things that, Loren is realizing, Lan probably can't help him with. Is... he going to have to bite the bullet and ask Leah for relationship advice?
...Isn't this all getting ahead of things anyway, considering he hasn't even found out if Anaitis is interested in being casual friends let alone the possibility of something more?
He nods when she says she'll help him look.
It's at some remove -- when she's pulling away from the wall -- that he remembers what else he's supposed to do here: "Thanks."
Which is then followed with, "Do you think so? My eyes, huh..."
...Maybe it's not surprising he hasn't been on a date before if he hasn't even worked out what his good features are.
"...But let's find another stall." After that departure he thinks it'd be awkward to go back.