I just wanna be your friend! ;; Aran

Luka's life had been going great recently. Amerie had agreed to go on a date with him, the date went well, and his job was perfect. It was challenging, and stressful, but it kept Luka busy, and that's how he liked it. Amerie had been at the power plant today, but Luka was back at her home, doing some paper work she had assigned him. He just finished a large handful of it, when he decided to take a lunch break. He grabbed his brown paper lunch bag, and made his way to the back yard to sit.

When he walked outside he noticed Aran sitting alone at a fancy stone picnic table. Luka didn't really know much about the overloridian's body guard, so he thought maybe today would be a good day to get to know her a little.

"Hey, Aran!" He said as he made his way to the picnic table. "Mind if I join you?"

Aran's life should have been going great lately. It was definitely better than it had ever been. She had a big room with a nice bed and a bathroom with running water. She got three decent meals a day, every day. And her boss/friend was the sweetest, kindest girl she had ever known. That was the problem, though. Aran knew it was a bad idea from the start, but she couldn't stop herself from falling for Amerie anyways.

And now an annoying thing called Luka had entered the picture. Not only had he swept Amerie off her feet with his nice clothes and hair and perfect fucking smile, but now Amerie went to him for things she used to go to Aran for. And why shouldn't she? Aran thought bitterly. Luka was the adviser. She was just the bodyguard.

Fuck. This was why nothing good ever came out of falling for straight girls.

Luka wrote:"Hey, Aran!" He said as he made his way to the picnic table. "Mind if I join you?"

Aran was distracted from her inner thoughts when that annoying thing she mentioned earlier suddenly showed his face. Ugh. On top of hating the fact that this guy had gotten Amerie, Aran also just didn't like him. She didn't trust him. Amerie didn't see it, but he just seemed so fake, like he was trying too hard every time he opened his mouth.

"Whatever," she said, taking a bite out of the tuna sandwich she had with her.

Well, it wasn't necessarily a no. Luka shrugged and sat on the bench across from her. He started to pull out his lunch. Salami sandwich, orange, granola bar, and a bottle of water. He began to unwrap his sandwich from the plastic wrap and asked, "So...how did you come to work for Amerie?" Now that he was sitting, he felt sort of awkward. Maybe this was a bad idea.

Great. He wanted to have a conversation. "I walked here and asked her for a job," she replied flatly. "Didn't bring a resume or wear a suit like you did or nothing." But she still got the job, she thought. Amerie hired her anyways. But Amerie also didn't have that stupid, enthusiastic grin on her face like she did during Luka's entire interview. In fact, she had looked just plain terrified the entire time.

Aran wrote:"Didn't bring a resume or wear a suit like you did or nothing."

"Ah well," Luka replied. "I guess I did sort of overdress." He shrugged. "I just wanted to look nice and impress Amerie." He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed then said, "I was just raised that way I guess." If he didn't obey his father's rules, he usually got reprimanded, but he wasn't about to share that with Aran.

"Yeah, I could tell," Aran replied. She didn't need to read Luka's little piece of paper to know that he came from a rich, successful family. It was obvious from every part of him, from his clothes to his body language to the way he talked. It was all so forced. "You're always tryin too hard to impress everybody."

Aran wrote:"You're always tryin too hard to impress everybody."

Luka furrowed his brow. This woman seemed to really dislike him for some reason, maybe even hate him. He didn't understand why either. He never did anything to her. He didn't steal her job, he didn't kick her out of the overloridian's house, he didn't fire her, never said one mean comment toward her. Nothing! He didn't want to be enemies with this woman, he just wanted to be able to work with her, maybe even befriend her. Maybe that was too much, he had a feeling she'd never want to be his friend. He was still going to be nice to her though.

"Well I mean," he replied. "I don't really need to impress anybody anymore...I guess that's just how I am."

You're really not helping your case, Iris chastised. You're just making yourself sound snobbish.

Well I'm not meaning to! Luka internally groaned.

He sighed, and quietly took another bite of his sandwich.

"Why though?" Aran asked. "Why d'you care so much what clio thinka you?" Luka was right, he didn't have to impress anybody anymore. He already had his job and Amerie thought he was good at it. Hell, he definitely didn't have to impress Aran, yet here he was trying to befriend her despite her obvious disinterest.

Aran wrote:"Why d'you care so much what clio thinka you?"

"I don't know," Luka mumbled, while picking at the crust of his bread. "I was just...literally raised that way." It was true. Even when he was a young child his parents would dress him in nicely pressed suits, and dragged him along to all the boring parties. He had to stand up straight, show barely any emotion, and he wasn't allowed to play with the other children that he so desperately wanted to befriend. He had to be polite and respectful. Not playful and goofy. "You wouldn't understand," he told her.

Ha ha. Of course she couldn't understand. What could poor, uneducated, orphaned Aran ever understand about living the life of a rich mayor's son? "I guess not," she replied coolly. "Where I'm from it didn't matter what clio thought of you." What mattered on the streets of Stonecraft was finding a way to not freeze to death in the winter, or figuring out where to find something to eat, or learning how to defend yourself against clio who would hurt you for fun. All that mattered was just generally finding ways to stay alive.

Aran wrote:"Where I'm from it didn't matter what clio thought of you."

"It would have been nice if for one day," Luka replied. "My life could have been like that." Not that he was saying he wanted to live in the slums. He didn't know Aran's full story, but he knew she didn't grow up in the nicer cities of Dahlin or Lilycove. "My own parents judged me." Although it seemed like he was trying to compare lives with her, he didn't mean for it to sound like that. Whatever hardships he endured living with his family, he was sure Aran's were ten times worse.

He'd misunderstood her. If he wanted one day of his life where he didn't get judged, he wasn't going to find it on the streets of Stonecraft, or anywhere else in her life. "Never said I didn't get judged by anyone," Aran said. "Just that it didn't matter. It doesn't now, either. Your parents judge you? Fuck 'em. Who cares what they think?"

You're bein' kinda mean, Aran, Gamma said. It was true that Aran didn't care what clio thought of her, but usually she was more sympathetic to clio who did. Like the time she stood up for the girl in the coffee store.

Yeah, yeah. So she was being hard on the guy. He'd get over it.

Aran wrote:"Your parents judge you? Fuck 'em. Who cares what they think?"

"It's a lot easier said than done," Luka replied. If the fear of being locked up in a closet for hours, or being beaten bloody by a belt wasn't looming over his shoulders, maybe he could have stopped caring about his parents' opinions of him. Fuck, he still cared and still feared them, and he wasn't even living under their roof anymore!

"You don't even live with them," Aran pointed out. "You got a good job, a place to live. You could quit talkin' to 'em forever if you wanted. After tellin' them to go fuck themselves." Maybe Luka had been right, she really couldn't understand, because it didn't make any sense to her why anyone would stay in touch with judgmental, asshole parents.

Luka was starting to get frustrated. It was a lot more complicated than that. He wished it was that easy, to just cut off all ties from his mother and father, but they were always going to be a part of his life, they made sure of that. He was also feeling defensive. Never had anyone been so rude toward him before, and acted like his life was so easy and perfect. He knew it came off that way to everyone, but nobody knew what happened behind closed doors. Nobody. "I'm afraid of them, okay?!" He finally spat. "Terrified, scared, horrified!" He continued, "I hate them and I love them, because I fear them."

Whoa. Aran stared at Luka in surprise for a few seconds. Not just because of what he had said, but because she was pretty sure she was seeing underneath his perfect mask for the first time and hearing how he actually felt about something. After a few seconds, she said quietly, "They hit you, huh?"

She only knew cuz she had a friend once who went through something similar, before things eventually got too bad and the friend ended up on the streets with her. Luka's words and the way he said them were just like her friend's. Even the look on his face was the same.

Luka didn't answer. He felt so ashamed. He couldn't believe he snapped like that. Nobody, not even his closest friends knew of the abuse he went through his entire life. Here he was, sitting with this total stranger, and now she knew the truth. Instead of answering her, he stood up and turned. He lifted up his shirt, so that his back was exposed. His back was so ugly and foreign compared to the rest of his body, like it was somebody else's back. Scars, on every inch, bright red, and raised. There were more on his butt too, and the back of his legs, but for obvious reasons he wasn't going to show her those. Silently, he turned back around and sat after fixing his shirt. "They would lock me in the closet too," he finally spoke, unable to look her in the eye. "I'd be in there for hours." He ran a hand through his hair and sighed shakily. "I was in there for literally a whole day once because I received a B on a biology test."

Okay, so maybe Aran had been way too hard on this guy. She had thought he'd been hiding something, but she never would have guessed it would be this. "Hey," she said, since he wouldn't look back up at her. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. "What they did to you was fucked up. You didn't deserve it."

He still wouldn't look at her, so she pulled her hand away and got up. "Look," she told him, pulling her own shirt up. She had her own fair share of scars. She pointed to one on her stomach, an old burn mark. "This one's from an Earalas girl." She turned around and pointed to a long, jagged one on her back that sort of matched one of his. "That's from a Dian asshole who got me when I turned my back."

She wasn't trying to one-up him or anything. She knew it wasn't the same--most of her scars came from fights she had willingly gotten into, while his were from his monster parents attacking a defenseless child. Fucking asshole parents, beating up on a kid. She just wanted to show him that he shouldn't be ashamed and that, despite their crazily different backgrounds, they could relate to each other in a way.

She sat back down. "You ever tell anyone this before?"

Luka finally looked up when Aran began to show him her scars. He knew she had a hard life, but he didn't know the full extent. He was glad that Amerie had given her a job, now she had a better life, and was probably a lot safer now. Luka wished he could say the same.

Aran wrote:"You ever tell anyone this before?"

"Never," Luka replied with a shake of his head. "Only my brother knows...and he also suffers their wrath."

"Well, uh, listen," Aran said, her voice quiet. She rubbed her face with her hand, feeling a strong mixture of pity, sympathy and anger. "They can't do that to you anymore, you know? You live here now."

And gods help those parents if they ever showed their faces around here. Aran didn't care if one of 'em was the fucking mayor of Dahlin. No one who beat up innocent kids deserved to get away with it.

Aran wrote:"They can't do that to you anymore, you know? You live here now."

Luka didn't answer right away.

She's right, you know, Iris told him sympathetically.

"I know," he mumbled, to both Aran and his daemon. "But they're always going to be in my life." He was able to look at Aran again. "I can't cut them out completely, it's not that easy."

"You could," Aran told him, "if you wanted to."

She, personally, couldn't get why anybody in Luka's situation wouldn't want to cut his shitty parents out of his life forever. But if he didn't want to, she wasn't gonna ask why, cuz this was obviously a really painful subject. Still though...if they ever showed up to visit him or whatever and Aran saw them, she wasn't sure she'd be able to stop herself from giving them what they deserved.

She's right you know, Iris told him encouragingly. Luka knew she was right, but he didn't know how to do it. He hated himself for being so afraid of them, like he was still a child. It's not like they had anything to hold over his head anymore. He didn't require food or shelter from them, he no longer needed their money. What was keeping him from telling them to go fuck themselves? "I don't know how," he finally responded.

"Well, next time they try to come around, make sure me 'n Amerie are there," Aran told him, taking another bite of food. She figured he hadn't told any of this to Amerie, and probably didn't want to, but he could just vaguely mention to her that he didn't want his parents around. She'd understand, she had shitty parents too, but a different kind of shitty. "We'll stand up for ya."

Aran wrote:"We'll stand up for ya."

Luka actually smiled. Although he wasn't looking forward to that day, if it ever did come, it felt nice to know that he had friends here. Friends that would protect him. "Really?" he asked. "You'd actually do that?"