towerofanimus | Maybe people weren't so bad, after all...

Characters: Roxas and you!
Setting: Floor Twenty | Floor Fourteen
Format: You choose, I'll follow.
Summary: A morning spent sitting on the stone ramp, then a horrible attempt at playing video games.
Warnings: Sappy friendship, and Roxas being pleasant for a change.

Floor Twenty, morning;
He was alive, which was good. While embarrassing, his second death due to exhaustion seemed pretty far behind him, now. He'd actually begun sleeping in his room again, even. Sure, maybe he was still wary, but healthy caution and not outright paranoia. Actually, he wanted to talk to Eiji personally, but...well, embarrassment.

So, Roxas went to the new stone path, sit on an edge and dangle his legs off. It was the best way he knew to think, even if the view wasn't nearly as nice as it was at home.

Floor Fourteen, afternoon;
Trying to be socially proactive was...well, harder than he'd thought. Not that Roxas anticipated apologies being easy, but his head wasn't getting any clearer the more he sat and dwelled on it. Instead, he decided to take a break and explore some of the other floors a bit...and got sucked in to playing a random videogame about...catching eggplants? After four times of complete and total failure, Roxas dropped the controller with a huff.

"What's the point of these games, anyway...?" Even as he said that, he began rooting through the other games, looking for something a little less futile.

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Were it not for the fact that Naminé had already paid a visit to the new floor with all the video games and such due to the movie night the other day, she probably would not have made an effort to head that direction. She'd been through the floors between that one and the dorms, and that experience had been enough to ensure that if she wanted to visit the fourteenth floor again, it would more likely be by taking the elevator to the bottom and walking up from there than by making the shorter trip downward. After finishing lunch, she'd originally intended to take the elevator straight back to her room, but... she was already out. Why not do something besides draw today? She could, as hard as it still was to wrap her head around that sometimes.

She'd been meaning to explore the libraries a little more, but after seeing the second one, she wasn't so eager to look at either of them. Instead, she chose to pay a visit to the one place she knew was enjoyable; the media room. So, after the long trip, she stepped onto the fourteenth floor and paused to catch her breath. It was about then that she thought she heard a familiar voice and, believing herself to have heard wrong, glanced over sharply to see an equally familiar blond digging through the games. "--Roxas?"

Roxas whirled around in his spot on the ground, smiling when he spotted the blonde. "Naminé, hi!"

If anything was amiss- for once -Roxas was in too good a mood to let it get to him. Ignoring the whole failure with videogames a moment ago. Which he glanced back at, ruffling his hair.

"...ahaha, I guess I shouldn't be wasting my time with this stuff."

The smile was perhaps more startling than his sudden turn, but maybe that was just because she still wasn't used to him actually being able to interact with her. After a brief moment of recovery time, she smiled back as best she could manage on short notice. "H-hello, Roxas." She wanted to say something about being happy he was back, but-- he seemed to be in a good mood, and she wasn't so sure that that would be a good thing to bring up at a time like this. Fortunately, he gave her something else to discuss, which she quickly latched onto.

"Well, it's not like you're going to run out of free time, here." It was ever so gently joking, but still true. She stepped closer, hoping to get a better look at exactly what he was 'wasting his time' on.

Aside from the eggplant game, there was some stock shooter with horrible controls, and probably a wii-like party game or two laid out in front of him. RPGs would probably be too much to ask for.

"True, but...I guess I just keep feeling guilty. I still had summer homework to finish, so this sort of feels like cheating." A short laugh, and Roxas picked the controller up, popping the eggplant game out and inserting the party game. "Do you want to play with me?"

She refrained from saying that she knew about the homework.

Thankful for yet another distraction, she quickly agreed to the offer with a, "Sure." ...Even though she'd never played a video game in her life and had no idea how to do so or whether she would even like it. Hesitating only briefly, she moved to sit down next to him. Her inclination to help him wouldn't quite let that thing about the homework go, though, so, carefully, she said, "...If it really bothers you, you could finish the homework anyway, even if you won't get the chance to turn it in."

"The homework packet is back home. I...can't remember what it was, anyway." A report? He frankly hadn't even remembered it until Olette harassed him with it in the first place, so...

Roxas popped in the party game, at least aware that most girls didn't like shooter games. However, he hung at the intro screen, peeking at Nams with a smile. "You okay? I don't know how to play this, either."

"Oh. I-- guess that would make it harder." She let out a tiny, slightly embarrassed laugh and very decidedly did not mention that she could probably have helped him dig up the memory if she'd tried.

Discovering that she was being peeked at, she looked briefly surprised, then smiled back. "Y-- yes, I'm okay." Now, if only she knew how she was supposed to hold the controller. "We can learn together."

Roxas gave a laugh of his own, picking up the controller to show her how to hold it. "Like this, I think."

He totally missed the intro to the game, mostly because something else occurred to him. "What do you usually do? Like, for fun."

"--Thank you." And she was quite grateful to have that problem solved. She made sure she was holding it the way he was, even though it wasn't really time to do anything with it yet.

"--...." The question seemed to briefly perplex her, but by that point she'd been asked it enough times to have an answer without too much thought... although saying it to him was a little more awkward than usual; what she usually did, not for fun but because she had to, was work on memories, at least back in their world. Drawing was part of that, and yet it was also the only thing that she had been able to identify as something she did 'for fun', at least here, although really she did it because that was what she did. She didn't know what else to do. "I... draw, I guess."

Roxas seemed to grow a little wary when she didn't answer right away, wondering if he'd done something wrong, but- drawings apparently sidetracked him quite a bit. The controller was set down in favor of gesturing, as the intro of the game looped.

"Really? Can I see, some time?" What? Artistic stuff was interesting to him. He'd never understood why, and the closest he'd ever gotten to it was Olette's scrapbooking and Pence's photography, but...

His response was about as good as she could possibly have hoped... and yet briefly she felt embarrassed. He wanted to see...? Well, he'd had a look at them before, but that was after his time, she supposed. And what exactly would he think of the fact that some of the drawings were of him, now that the situation was different? She drew everyone she knew, certainly, but so rarely had any of them had the chance to see said drawing that she wasn't quite certain what to expect, and after that incident in the mansion at Twilight Town, she was rather concerned about how he'd react to things in the first place.

Still, she didn't have the heart to say no. It could be-- fun, couldn't it? "...Sure. If you want to." For the life of her she couldn't help looking a little bit shy.

"Do...you think you could teach me?" That was pretty embarassing, but he was sort of proud he'd spit it out. His hair got a ruffle, and he tried to explain, but... "See, my friends all have these projects- Olette was making this scrapbook about our summer, and Pence was taking the pictures for it, and Hayner was..." A pause. "Being Hayner, and I felt bad that I couldn't really help sans fetching supplies." And keeping Hayner from helping. But that was a whole different gripe.

"I just...I want to be able to do something nice for my friends."

His request seemed to surprise her, and she tilted her head slightly to regard him. Teach him? Funny-- she wouldn't know the first thing about teaching someone something she'd never actually been taught herself. Still, she owed it to him to try, didn't she? Slowly, she nodded. "I'm not sure how good a teacher I'll be, but... if you want to learn, then I'd be happy to help." She fell silent for a moment, pondering saying the other thing she was thinking. "...That's a good reason to want to learn." Better than the reason she did, anyway.

Maybe people weren't so bad, after all...

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