The New Friend
There's a lot to be said for self-delusionment when it comes to matters of the heart. ~ Diane Frolov/Andrew Schneider (Northern Exposure)
OOC Date: November 17, 2009
IC Date: Day 27, Month 3, Turn 21
Who: Shad, Gabrion
Where: Resident Common Room/Gabrion's Room
Gabrion runs into Shad, and works up the nerve to ask him out for a drink at the Snowasis. He is soundly rebuffed as Shad has assumed he's much younger than he is, and takes insult. Shad wants to be friends. At first Gabrion is having none of it, but when Shad stops by his room later, Gabe accepts his apology, and they hang out.
Off work early, Gabrion has taken the time to clean up and change for dinner, and is now wandering through the common room. He pauses to say hello to a boy of about his age; they chat for a few minutes, and then he takes his leave and moves on, ambling casually through the room.
Shad, still slightly damp from cleaning up, walks into the common room and flops down on one of the chairs with a tired-sounding 'whuff'. It takes him a minute to spot ... and recognize ... Gabrion, but once he does, he waves. "Hey there, Gabrion."
Gabrion's face lights up with a smile when the other apprentice greets him. "Shad! Hey, how are you doing?" he asks as he hurries over and takes a seat in a chair across from him. "Been hoping I'd run into you again."
"I've been doing all right." Shad says, and, indeed, he seems to have lost all of the nervous tension that had him stammering and stuttering and curling in on himself that first day. "How're you?"
"Pretty good!" Gabrion says; and indeed he seems happy and content. "Healer Hall took me back - I'm on probation, but if I can do well at winter exams..." He grins.
"Took you back?" Shad asks, not being privy to the Life And Times (tm) prior to his arrival here.
"Yeah," Gabrion says, with wrinkled nose. "I had... left. I mean, there was a lot of reasons. But Madilla got Delifa to get them to take me back, /and/ I don't have to go back to the hall - I can be posted here. Which, I wasn't going to do it if I had to go back there. So it'll all be good now." He smiles again.
"Ahhh, sounds like I wasn't the only one disgusted with life at home. Glad you could stay here." Shad says.
"Yeah. Same kind of deal," Gabe says succinctly. "I'm glad too. Hey, I was wondering - I mean, we got a few things in common, I guess, so I thought maybe - you want to go to the Snowasis some time, get a drink, you know?" He shifts anxiously in the chair and waits on the answer with bated breath.
Shad gives Gabrion a long look. "I ... don't drink." He admits. "Except fellis-laced wine once or twice, but that doesn't exactly count."
Gabrion deflates. "Oh," he says, and looks at the floor. There's an awkward pause, after which he says, "They have fruit juice, I think...?"
"Oh, if they do, then sure. I just ... " Shad shrugged. "Beer and wine were not exactly something we were encouraged to drink, and the supplies of it were hard to get to. And I had bigger things on my mind than stealing some of dad's beer, you know?"
"Right. Yeah," Gabe says, his forehead creasing as he looks thoughtfully at Shad. That look dissolves into another smile, though, and he says, "If you want to give some a try, you know. I'll buy. But it's not - I mean, you know. Whatever, right? It's not as hard to get here, though," he confides. "I have a little stash in my room, actually."
Ok, Shad may be a bit clueless about flirting, but something is definitely going on here. Gabrion's ... trying awfully hard to get him to himself. "Umm, Gabrion? Please tell me you're not flirting with me. You're /ten/."
"What?" Gabrion blinks, insulted. "I'm not /ten/. I'm fourteen, and..." he breaks off and makes a noise of disgust, then gets to his feet. "Forget it," he says heatedly. "If you didn't want to, you could just say no, but if you're going to be a jerk..." he concludes with a colorful, creative, and definitely anatomically impossible suggestion for how Shad ought to spend his free time, then storms off toward the passageway that leads to the resident quarters.
Ahhh, hell. Shad curses himself, then gets up and hurries after Gabrion. "Gabrion, wait, would you? I'm sorry, ok? I really thought you were that young." Freaked him out a bit, having someone he thought was pre-pubescent eyeing him up. "I'm new to this, ok?" VERY new.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Gabrion demands as he turns around, hands on hips; pride has him unwilling to let go of being insulted. "Or do you just know a lot of ten year olds who play cards with their friends and keep wine in their rooms? I look young, alright, fine, but I don't look /ten/. What, did you think W'chek would start being nice to you if you look down your nose at me like B'tal does whenever he comes around? I hate to break it to you, but he's not even nice to B'tal."
Shad grimaces. "This has nothing to do with W'chek." It really, really doesn't. "Heck, I've not even seen him since that first night. And this is a /Weyr/, Gabrion. If you're from a Hold or Crafthall, you've heard the tales of what goes on in a Weyr. For all I knew, a kid that young drinking and such wouldn't be the massive issue it'd be in a Hold. I'm /new/ to all this. And I'm sorry, ok?"
It occurs to Gabe that Shad might actually be telling the truth. He eyes him, suspiciously, and finally says in a grudging manner, "All right, fine." But he's not going to make it easy, either: he leaves it there. Ball in Shad's court.
Shad sighs. He just keeps screwing up, doesn't he? But what other choice is there? Living in fear at the Hall? No thanks. And he'd run into the same issues in another Weyr. Probably worse. "Look ... I ... Crap." He sighs. "You're still a little young for me to want to ... be with." Ack ack ack. "But ... maybe we can try friends?"
"Yeah. Sure," Gabe says flatly, like he just accidentally left off the word 'whatever.' With that, he turns, says, "Have a good night," over his shoulder, and heads off down the corridor again to go sulk in his room. At least he has his stash of alcohol in there.
---------------- o ----------------
All of dinner and for a good hour after, Shad tried to figure out how to fix the problem between him and Gabe. Aaaaaaaawkward. The kid was /fourteen/ for god's sake. And Shad got all ... twittery ... dealing with someone his own age or older. The thought of ... ack. Just ... no. But he would like to at least have one person that doesn't hate him, so ... time to try to fix this. Which means finding Gabe.
Gabrion did emerge long enough to get a plate full of dinner, which he carried right back to the room he shares with three other guys, though they're out for the evening. And there he's been holed up ever since, with his wine and a little book of charcoal-on-paper naughty pictures for company. Fortunately, he's the sort who gets more mellow when he drinks, rather than the other way around.
It takes a bit of asking around before Shad discovers where Gabe's room is at. He eventually finds it, and knocks on the door.
Gabrion is startled out of his contemplation of the booklet, and there's some scurrying around behind the door as he puts it away, and yanks the spread up on his bed so that it looks like he made at least a half-assed attempt to tidy up. Then he goes to the door, and blinks in surprise when he sees Shad. "Hey," he says neutrally, and pushes the door open wider, then turns and walks into the room, so that Shad can come in. There's another chair, aside from the one he was using, but it's covered in a massive pile of laundry that might or might not be clean. Gabe scoops up the laundry in two armloads and dumps it on one of the other (unmade) beds, and drags the chair over near the other one. There's a bottle of wine and a glass, not yet emptied, on the little table he was sitting at.
"Hi." Shad says. "I ... I'm sorry about earlier." Man, this sucks.
"Okay," Gabe says, and not all pissy like last time. "You want some wine?" Because that's polite. "Sorry I don't have anything else in here." He flops back down on his chair, and gestures at the other one, an invitation to sit down.
Well, this is better than him getting yelled at, Shad supposes, so he comes in. "Sure, but ... just a little. Like I said, only ever had it laced with fellis." Nooooooo tolerance whatever here. He takes a seat in the free chair.
Gabrion opens a drawer and pulls out another glass, into which he pours about an inch of wine, and puts it on the table in front of Shad. "There you go. This stuff's eh, not great, not bad. You sip it though, don't gulp it like water." He picks up his own glass and leans back in the chair. "So how's... smith stuff?" he asks. Just as if they didn't have an argument earlier.
Shad takes the glass, peering at the wine for a moment before risking a swallow, then making a bit of a face, like he can't quite decide if he likes it or not. "Pretty good." He says. "Working hard, even if /what/ I'm working on is a lot different than what I did at the Hold."
"What are you doing?" Gabe asks, and confesses, "I don't know a whole lot about what smiths do. Besides... make stuff."
Shad chuckles. "Well, I'm working towards my senior apprenticeship." He says. "Smithcraft and Minecraft work a little differently than the other crafts, because you have to build up a /lot/ of physical muscle to do the heavy work, and that just isn't possible until you're my age or older, so apprenticeship lasts longer. At the Hold, I was doing a lot of gruntwork, shaping the metal ingots into basic, usable shapes. Here, I'm doing more ... fine work. Actually making things."
Gabrion nods his head. "That makes sense. But it's pretty cool, you wind up built at the end," he says with a grin. "Healers apprentice for a long time but mainly because there's soooo much to learn, and like, you don't want to not learn it well enough and accidentally kill someone. What kind of stuff have you been making?"
"Mostly buckles for the riders' gear." Shad says. "And a /lot/ of learning about etching and embellishing, since the riders like to have their stuff personalized. Which I'm enjoying immensely."
"Yeah, they do," Gabe says, and laughs. "Not like you can really /lose/ buckles, but I guess that's not the point."
"Lose, no, but they do wear out and need replacing. Especially on the harnesses for the dragons." Shad says. "Those get worn pretty fast."
Gabrion ahs. "Yeah? I'd think the leather would wear out first. Huh. Well, I guess you don't want to mess around, with harnesses." He takes another sip of wine. "So you like it at the weyr, huh?"
"It probably does, but that's not the end I deal with." Shad says with a grin. "It's been ... interesting. And educational." He says. "And a lot nicer, in some respects, than the Hold."
"I guess so," Gabe says fervently. "I mean, I dunno, but if Crom was like Healer Hall..." He shakes his head. "I guess... I mean, it's not everyone, you know? But there's always those one or two guys, and then everyone else just laughs along. They mussed up my bed right before dorm inspection every day for two sevens running, and when I finally told one of the masters, all he said was 'If you'd just be a man...'" He rolls his eyes.
Shad snorts. "Try being in a dorm with a bunch of guys /heavily/ invested in macho dragonpoo." He says. "They tended to skip straight to physical harassment. I had bruised shins for a week solid from being tripped and having things slammed into me all the time. And the atmosphere at Crom is just ... " Shad shrugs. "Pure poison."
"I got a little of that," Gabe says, making a face. "But they tried not to leave marks. Hah. Well, anyway, Yyth showed them but good, when she and P'ax came to take me back home." The memory brings a triumphant grin to his face. "It was pretty awesome, actually. There was this guy, Zekaro, he was kind of the - you know, the instigator. He and these other guys found out I was going and they planned it that they were going to come out and cheer and applaud and everything when the dragon took off. Well, Yyth figured out there was something going down, so she ran /right/ at them and roared like she was going to eat them. Then she took off, but they ran off into the hold squealing like girls. And, my friend wrote me a letter later, he said that they told Master Kinston a dragon tried to attack them and got in deep kaka for lying about a dragonrider." He smirks. "Yyth is pretty awesome."
Shad has to laugh at this tale. "That." He says. "Is utterly awesome. I'm gonna have to give Yyth a pat for that next time I see her." He sighs. "Wish my own exit from Crom could have been ... as fun, but it was really best that it happened the way it did, all things considered."
Gabrion grimaces briefly when Shad mentions seeing Yyth, but says nothing of it; instead he asks, "How did it happen, then?" There's got to be some kind of story there.
"I basically got banished, with my tail between my legs." Shad says. "They found out about the gay thing, and couldn't get rid of me fast enough to suit them. Saw sending me to the Weyr as a fitting punishment for being a freak, like everyone else that lives in the Weyr." From his tone, he's clearly quoting someone else's attitude about the Weyr, not his own.
Gabrion snorts. "Holders are messed up, aren't they?" he says with a shake of his head. "I mean, so dragonriders are like, the cream of Pernese society, to be respected and revered and all that. AND YET... everyone who lives at a weyr is a freak. And it doesn't, like, occur to them that there's maybe a contradiction." Which is highly amusing to Gabrion.
"According to the vast majority of Crom residents, Dragonriders need to roll over and die already." Shad says sadly. "So it isn't that much a contradiction, at least there."
Gabrion blinks. "For real? Is it that bad?" he asks. He frowns, and shakes his head. "Too bad Thread's done with, or there'd be an obvious solution."
"Pretty much. They /hate/ riders there. Mostly because Thread /is/ done with, I think. What use are dragons now? Why should we bother tithing when they're useless? All that idiocy."
"People are stupid," Gabe concurs. "Oh well, at least you're out of it now. Smithcraft won't make you go back, will they?"
"Nah." Shad says. "I'll probably have to go to the Hall for a year or two to get my Journeyman knots, but that's years away, and then I can come back. And if the Weyr has a Master qualified to rate me to Journeyman, I might not have to go to the Hall at all."
"Ooooh," Gabe says. "That would be pretty awesome. I'll probably have to go back to Healer /eventually/ but like you say, not for a long time, and if Delifa makes master... do they have a smith master here? Or an advanced journeyman?" He doesn't really keep up with the other crafts.
"I don't really know, and even if they have one here now, there's no guarantee they'll still be here in three or four years." Shad says. "So I'll just have to hope."
"True. Well, you'll have all those muscles," Gabe points out, "so if anyone gives you crap once you go back, you can just pound them into a puddle of goo."
Shad laughs. "Only problem with that is that most of the guys at the Hall, except for the young apprentices, will be as muscular. Kinda levels the field a bit. But, hopefully, I shouldn't get as much crap at the Hall proper as I did in Crom."
"Hmm, true. But yeah, if Crom has an extra special issue with the weyr, then the hall shouldn't be as bad," Gabe says. "And you don't seem like - I mean, I think you'd be better at sticking up for yourself. Than I was."
Shad snorts. "Away from my family, yeah, I probably would be. My family /sucks/. Every time-honored, hide-bound, traditional bit of nonsense you can think of, they cling to it."
"Families suck no matter what," Gabe says firmly. "My parents don't care that I'm gay, but my mom freaks out that something bad is going to happen if I want to do /anything/, and she's basically said that if any of us stands for impression, she's basically never speaking to us again. I had a brother who died in a weyrling accident before I was born and... she's kind of nuts about it. I think my twin's gonna stand anyway though, next time there's eggs, if he can get permission." He smirks. "Mom's definitely going to flip out."
"You probably have a point." Shad agrees, then sort of stares for a second. " ... stand?" Faranth. That possibility had NEVER occurred to him, despite being in a Weyr now. Be Searched? Stand? Have a chance at ...
Gabrion nods his head. "Yeah. We were born here; there's no reason he can't get permission, unless he seriously ticks someone off between now and then, you know?" He doesn't seem aware of what a revelation this idea is for Shad; it's old hat to him.
Ok, it might not have been every kid's dream in Crom, but for Shad, to be a dragonrider still holds an appeal ... but it's a circumstance he's never aspired to reach. He'll mull it all over later. "You're lucky." He settles for.
"Eh," Gabe says, and shrugs. "It's the interval. Not near as many eggs, so it's worse odds. Of course, they don't search as many from outside the weyr. You could probably get searched, if you wanted," he adds as an afterthought. "I mean hell, I bet Pax'd say Yyth picked you, if you asked him to." That comment is just a hair short of being snide. "But if not, I could ask my dad. You could find someone, if you really wanted."
Shad shrugs. "I ... never really thought beyond being a Smith. Being a rider was so far out of the realm of possibility it was pathetic ... not to mention I'd have gotten beat to within an inch of my life if anyone found out I aspired to that. So I never really gave it any thought."
"Ah. Well. Then you'd for-sure get to stay," Gabe points out, but he shrugs. His glass is empty. He pours a little more wine in it - not too much. "You got brothers, sisters, anything, back home?" he asks. "Or just the parents?"
Shad grins almost evilly, clearly anticipating a reaction. "I have six sisters and five brothers."
Gabrion boggles. "Wow, your parents didn't get much rest, did they?" he cracks, and laughs aloud. "Any of them cool, or they all like your parents?"
"My mom didn't, no. Actually, some of them are only half-siblings ... dad wore his first wife right out, then remarried." Shad says. "A couple of them are alright. The youngest of my sisters is pretty cool, and one of my brothers ... one of the half-brothers."
Gabrion winces. "Yikes," he says. "Wow. Yeah, women in weyrs don't have that many kids. Counting the dead one my mom had four of us, and that's kind of a lot. But two of us are twins, so. Well, that's good you got some that are okay? You should write to them."
Shad nods. "My dad's a real ... holdover from the whole 'women's place is barefoot, pregnant, and silent' thing. Made the house a real laugh riot, trust me. I might try to get Orinala, that's my sister, out of there if I can. She's a bit of a rebel, and it's going to get her killed, if she stays."
"Oh," Gabe says, sobered by that thought. "Yeah. Well, yeah. That's probably not a bad idea. Or she could apprentice, right? How old is she?"
"She's nineteen." Shad says. "And she probably could, to the Weavercraft. She's good. But ... like I said, my dad's a real holdover. Women, to his mind, shouldn't be in the Crafts, so she was never allowed to apprentice. None of the girls were."
"That sucks," Gabrion says bluntly, appalled. "They couldn't just... go anyway?"
"How? It's /Crom/. And they spent their entire childhoods getting told their future. Most of them never looked past that, that I know of. Orinala's the only one I know for sure. And she has no resources, no way to get out, and as long as she's in Crom, where our family can get their claws into her ... " He trails off. "Shards, /I/ had to resort to being found out to be gay to get out of there."
"You should get a ride, and go get her," Gabe says. "Just get her and leave. You know? Before anyone can say anything."
Shad sort of blinks. "I can ... do that?"
Gabrion shrugs. "If you can get a rider to help you, sure. I mean, your dad'll probably get pissed off and complain to K'del, and he'll waffle around about it and you might get yelled at or something but nothing'll really happen. K'del's kind of a wuss," Gabe says with another shrug. "Just my opinion."
Oh. Yes. Well ... Shad is not going to be doing anything to earn K'del's ire for a while. But he will definitely consider it once things calm down. Hopefully, Orinala can last that long. "Huh. I'll have to see if I can get someone to agree to it."
"Bet P'ax would," Gabe suggests. "He's cool about stuff like that, and doesn't care about pissing people off."
"I'll see if he's willing." Shad says, knowing he might not be. P'ax has been more than strange around him.
Gabrion picks up the bottle and waggles it, offering Shad more wine.
Shad considers, then nods and holds out the glass. "A bit more." He says.
Gabrion pours, judiciously. "Glad you came over," he says after a bit of silence.
"So'm I. I'd really like to have an actual friend here, you know?"
Gabrion nods his head. He knows. "Yeah," he says. But then he smirks. "And hey, there's always P'ax, too."
"I'm not so sure he's actually, you know, a friend. He's been acting kind of strange, but I'm not sure if that's just him, or what." Shad says.
"He is weird sometimes," Gabe agrees, and adds, "He sleeps with everyone," for some reason.
Shad snickers. "I kind of got that impression." He's not going to tell Gabe the two of them did some heavy petting. Nuh uh. "Though it's good to know it might be just him, and not aimed at me in particular."
"Nope. Not just you," Gabe confirms. "But that's good, I wondered if he'd like, told you or whatever." He seems to know they did /something/.
"Told me what?" Shad wants to know.
"That he sleeps around," Gabe explains patiently.
"Oh, that. No, he didn't say it explicitly, but ... " Shad grins. "Wasn't too hard to guess from the comments he made, and the way he looks at guys."
Gabrion snorts. "Yeah, definitely," he agrees. "Not too hard."
Shad snickers. "Though I'll admit it took me about ... two days? To realize he WAS flirting. Not used to seeing that, you know?"
"Really?" Gabe finds that hard to believe. "He's like, the most obvious ever."
"Yeah, really. I'm not used to guys flirting with guys, remember?" Shad says. "It threw me."
Gabrion rolls his eyes. "You'll get used to it."
Shad chuckles. "Yeah, I know I will. It's ... nice, actually. Don't know as I'll have the nerve to do it myself anytime soon, but it's fun to watch."
Gabrion gestures at the wine bottle. "Drinking helps," he says with a smirk. "Not too much though, but just enough."
Shad chuckles. "Sorry, Gabrion. Not going to flirt with you. At least, not until you're at least a year older."
Gabrion gives Shad an impatient look. "That's not what I was saying. Faranth. I'm fifteen in three months, alright? I'll throw a sharding party so you don't miss the date."
Shad laughs. "Sorry, Gabrion, sorry." He says, taking another sip.
Gabrion mutters something, but then he gets out a deck of cards and teaches Shad a game for two players (money doesn't even need to change hands) and the two spend a companionable evening until it's time for bed.
OOC Date: November 17, 2009
IC Date: Day 27, Month 3, Turn 21
Who: Shad, Gabrion
Where: Resident Common Room/Gabrion's Room
Gabrion runs into Shad, and works up the nerve to ask him out for a drink at the Snowasis. He is soundly rebuffed as Shad has assumed he's much younger than he is, and takes insult. Shad wants to be friends. At first Gabrion is having none of it, but when Shad stops by his room later, Gabe accepts his apology, and they hang out.
Off work early, Gabrion has taken the time to clean up and change for dinner, and is now wandering through the common room. He pauses to say hello to a boy of about his age; they chat for a few minutes, and then he takes his leave and moves on, ambling casually through the room.
Shad, still slightly damp from cleaning up, walks into the common room and flops down on one of the chairs with a tired-sounding 'whuff'. It takes him a minute to spot ... and recognize ... Gabrion, but once he does, he waves. "Hey there, Gabrion."
Gabrion's face lights up with a smile when the other apprentice greets him. "Shad! Hey, how are you doing?" he asks as he hurries over and takes a seat in a chair across from him. "Been hoping I'd run into you again."
"I've been doing all right." Shad says, and, indeed, he seems to have lost all of the nervous tension that had him stammering and stuttering and curling in on himself that first day. "How're you?"
"Pretty good!" Gabrion says; and indeed he seems happy and content. "Healer Hall took me back - I'm on probation, but if I can do well at winter exams..." He grins.
"Took you back?" Shad asks, not being privy to the Life And Times (tm) prior to his arrival here.
"Yeah," Gabrion says, with wrinkled nose. "I had... left. I mean, there was a lot of reasons. But Madilla got Delifa to get them to take me back, /and/ I don't have to go back to the hall - I can be posted here. Which, I wasn't going to do it if I had to go back there. So it'll all be good now." He smiles again.
"Ahhh, sounds like I wasn't the only one disgusted with life at home. Glad you could stay here." Shad says.
"Yeah. Same kind of deal," Gabe says succinctly. "I'm glad too. Hey, I was wondering - I mean, we got a few things in common, I guess, so I thought maybe - you want to go to the Snowasis some time, get a drink, you know?" He shifts anxiously in the chair and waits on the answer with bated breath.
Shad gives Gabrion a long look. "I ... don't drink." He admits. "Except fellis-laced wine once or twice, but that doesn't exactly count."
Gabrion deflates. "Oh," he says, and looks at the floor. There's an awkward pause, after which he says, "They have fruit juice, I think...?"
"Oh, if they do, then sure. I just ... " Shad shrugged. "Beer and wine were not exactly something we were encouraged to drink, and the supplies of it were hard to get to. And I had bigger things on my mind than stealing some of dad's beer, you know?"
"Right. Yeah," Gabe says, his forehead creasing as he looks thoughtfully at Shad. That look dissolves into another smile, though, and he says, "If you want to give some a try, you know. I'll buy. But it's not - I mean, you know. Whatever, right? It's not as hard to get here, though," he confides. "I have a little stash in my room, actually."
Ok, Shad may be a bit clueless about flirting, but something is definitely going on here. Gabrion's ... trying awfully hard to get him to himself. "Umm, Gabrion? Please tell me you're not flirting with me. You're /ten/."
"What?" Gabrion blinks, insulted. "I'm not /ten/. I'm fourteen, and..." he breaks off and makes a noise of disgust, then gets to his feet. "Forget it," he says heatedly. "If you didn't want to, you could just say no, but if you're going to be a jerk..." he concludes with a colorful, creative, and definitely anatomically impossible suggestion for how Shad ought to spend his free time, then storms off toward the passageway that leads to the resident quarters.
Ahhh, hell. Shad curses himself, then gets up and hurries after Gabrion. "Gabrion, wait, would you? I'm sorry, ok? I really thought you were that young." Freaked him out a bit, having someone he thought was pre-pubescent eyeing him up. "I'm new to this, ok?" VERY new.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Gabrion demands as he turns around, hands on hips; pride has him unwilling to let go of being insulted. "Or do you just know a lot of ten year olds who play cards with their friends and keep wine in their rooms? I look young, alright, fine, but I don't look /ten/. What, did you think W'chek would start being nice to you if you look down your nose at me like B'tal does whenever he comes around? I hate to break it to you, but he's not even nice to B'tal."
Shad grimaces. "This has nothing to do with W'chek." It really, really doesn't. "Heck, I've not even seen him since that first night. And this is a /Weyr/, Gabrion. If you're from a Hold or Crafthall, you've heard the tales of what goes on in a Weyr. For all I knew, a kid that young drinking and such wouldn't be the massive issue it'd be in a Hold. I'm /new/ to all this. And I'm sorry, ok?"
It occurs to Gabe that Shad might actually be telling the truth. He eyes him, suspiciously, and finally says in a grudging manner, "All right, fine." But he's not going to make it easy, either: he leaves it there. Ball in Shad's court.
Shad sighs. He just keeps screwing up, doesn't he? But what other choice is there? Living in fear at the Hall? No thanks. And he'd run into the same issues in another Weyr. Probably worse. "Look ... I ... Crap." He sighs. "You're still a little young for me to want to ... be with." Ack ack ack. "But ... maybe we can try friends?"
"Yeah. Sure," Gabe says flatly, like he just accidentally left off the word 'whatever.' With that, he turns, says, "Have a good night," over his shoulder, and heads off down the corridor again to go sulk in his room. At least he has his stash of alcohol in there.
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All of dinner and for a good hour after, Shad tried to figure out how to fix the problem between him and Gabe. Aaaaaaaawkward. The kid was /fourteen/ for god's sake. And Shad got all ... twittery ... dealing with someone his own age or older. The thought of ... ack. Just ... no. But he would like to at least have one person that doesn't hate him, so ... time to try to fix this. Which means finding Gabe.
Gabrion did emerge long enough to get a plate full of dinner, which he carried right back to the room he shares with three other guys, though they're out for the evening. And there he's been holed up ever since, with his wine and a little book of charcoal-on-paper naughty pictures for company. Fortunately, he's the sort who gets more mellow when he drinks, rather than the other way around.
It takes a bit of asking around before Shad discovers where Gabe's room is at. He eventually finds it, and knocks on the door.
Gabrion is startled out of his contemplation of the booklet, and there's some scurrying around behind the door as he puts it away, and yanks the spread up on his bed so that it looks like he made at least a half-assed attempt to tidy up. Then he goes to the door, and blinks in surprise when he sees Shad. "Hey," he says neutrally, and pushes the door open wider, then turns and walks into the room, so that Shad can come in. There's another chair, aside from the one he was using, but it's covered in a massive pile of laundry that might or might not be clean. Gabe scoops up the laundry in two armloads and dumps it on one of the other (unmade) beds, and drags the chair over near the other one. There's a bottle of wine and a glass, not yet emptied, on the little table he was sitting at.
"Hi." Shad says. "I ... I'm sorry about earlier." Man, this sucks.
"Okay," Gabe says, and not all pissy like last time. "You want some wine?" Because that's polite. "Sorry I don't have anything else in here." He flops back down on his chair, and gestures at the other one, an invitation to sit down.
Well, this is better than him getting yelled at, Shad supposes, so he comes in. "Sure, but ... just a little. Like I said, only ever had it laced with fellis." Nooooooo tolerance whatever here. He takes a seat in the free chair.
Gabrion opens a drawer and pulls out another glass, into which he pours about an inch of wine, and puts it on the table in front of Shad. "There you go. This stuff's eh, not great, not bad. You sip it though, don't gulp it like water." He picks up his own glass and leans back in the chair. "So how's... smith stuff?" he asks. Just as if they didn't have an argument earlier.
Shad takes the glass, peering at the wine for a moment before risking a swallow, then making a bit of a face, like he can't quite decide if he likes it or not. "Pretty good." He says. "Working hard, even if /what/ I'm working on is a lot different than what I did at the Hold."
"What are you doing?" Gabe asks, and confesses, "I don't know a whole lot about what smiths do. Besides... make stuff."
Shad chuckles. "Well, I'm working towards my senior apprenticeship." He says. "Smithcraft and Minecraft work a little differently than the other crafts, because you have to build up a /lot/ of physical muscle to do the heavy work, and that just isn't possible until you're my age or older, so apprenticeship lasts longer. At the Hold, I was doing a lot of gruntwork, shaping the metal ingots into basic, usable shapes. Here, I'm doing more ... fine work. Actually making things."
Gabrion nods his head. "That makes sense. But it's pretty cool, you wind up built at the end," he says with a grin. "Healers apprentice for a long time but mainly because there's soooo much to learn, and like, you don't want to not learn it well enough and accidentally kill someone. What kind of stuff have you been making?"
"Mostly buckles for the riders' gear." Shad says. "And a /lot/ of learning about etching and embellishing, since the riders like to have their stuff personalized. Which I'm enjoying immensely."
"Yeah, they do," Gabe says, and laughs. "Not like you can really /lose/ buckles, but I guess that's not the point."
"Lose, no, but they do wear out and need replacing. Especially on the harnesses for the dragons." Shad says. "Those get worn pretty fast."
Gabrion ahs. "Yeah? I'd think the leather would wear out first. Huh. Well, I guess you don't want to mess around, with harnesses." He takes another sip of wine. "So you like it at the weyr, huh?"
"It probably does, but that's not the end I deal with." Shad says with a grin. "It's been ... interesting. And educational." He says. "And a lot nicer, in some respects, than the Hold."
"I guess so," Gabe says fervently. "I mean, I dunno, but if Crom was like Healer Hall..." He shakes his head. "I guess... I mean, it's not everyone, you know? But there's always those one or two guys, and then everyone else just laughs along. They mussed up my bed right before dorm inspection every day for two sevens running, and when I finally told one of the masters, all he said was 'If you'd just be a man...'" He rolls his eyes.
Shad snorts. "Try being in a dorm with a bunch of guys /heavily/ invested in macho dragonpoo." He says. "They tended to skip straight to physical harassment. I had bruised shins for a week solid from being tripped and having things slammed into me all the time. And the atmosphere at Crom is just ... " Shad shrugs. "Pure poison."
"I got a little of that," Gabe says, making a face. "But they tried not to leave marks. Hah. Well, anyway, Yyth showed them but good, when she and P'ax came to take me back home." The memory brings a triumphant grin to his face. "It was pretty awesome, actually. There was this guy, Zekaro, he was kind of the - you know, the instigator. He and these other guys found out I was going and they planned it that they were going to come out and cheer and applaud and everything when the dragon took off. Well, Yyth figured out there was something going down, so she ran /right/ at them and roared like she was going to eat them. Then she took off, but they ran off into the hold squealing like girls. And, my friend wrote me a letter later, he said that they told Master Kinston a dragon tried to attack them and got in deep kaka for lying about a dragonrider." He smirks. "Yyth is pretty awesome."
Shad has to laugh at this tale. "That." He says. "Is utterly awesome. I'm gonna have to give Yyth a pat for that next time I see her." He sighs. "Wish my own exit from Crom could have been ... as fun, but it was really best that it happened the way it did, all things considered."
Gabrion grimaces briefly when Shad mentions seeing Yyth, but says nothing of it; instead he asks, "How did it happen, then?" There's got to be some kind of story there.
"I basically got banished, with my tail between my legs." Shad says. "They found out about the gay thing, and couldn't get rid of me fast enough to suit them. Saw sending me to the Weyr as a fitting punishment for being a freak, like everyone else that lives in the Weyr." From his tone, he's clearly quoting someone else's attitude about the Weyr, not his own.
Gabrion snorts. "Holders are messed up, aren't they?" he says with a shake of his head. "I mean, so dragonriders are like, the cream of Pernese society, to be respected and revered and all that. AND YET... everyone who lives at a weyr is a freak. And it doesn't, like, occur to them that there's maybe a contradiction." Which is highly amusing to Gabrion.
"According to the vast majority of Crom residents, Dragonriders need to roll over and die already." Shad says sadly. "So it isn't that much a contradiction, at least there."
Gabrion blinks. "For real? Is it that bad?" he asks. He frowns, and shakes his head. "Too bad Thread's done with, or there'd be an obvious solution."
"Pretty much. They /hate/ riders there. Mostly because Thread /is/ done with, I think. What use are dragons now? Why should we bother tithing when they're useless? All that idiocy."
"People are stupid," Gabe concurs. "Oh well, at least you're out of it now. Smithcraft won't make you go back, will they?"
"Nah." Shad says. "I'll probably have to go to the Hall for a year or two to get my Journeyman knots, but that's years away, and then I can come back. And if the Weyr has a Master qualified to rate me to Journeyman, I might not have to go to the Hall at all."
"Ooooh," Gabe says. "That would be pretty awesome. I'll probably have to go back to Healer /eventually/ but like you say, not for a long time, and if Delifa makes master... do they have a smith master here? Or an advanced journeyman?" He doesn't really keep up with the other crafts.
"I don't really know, and even if they have one here now, there's no guarantee they'll still be here in three or four years." Shad says. "So I'll just have to hope."
"True. Well, you'll have all those muscles," Gabe points out, "so if anyone gives you crap once you go back, you can just pound them into a puddle of goo."
Shad laughs. "Only problem with that is that most of the guys at the Hall, except for the young apprentices, will be as muscular. Kinda levels the field a bit. But, hopefully, I shouldn't get as much crap at the Hall proper as I did in Crom."
"Hmm, true. But yeah, if Crom has an extra special issue with the weyr, then the hall shouldn't be as bad," Gabe says. "And you don't seem like - I mean, I think you'd be better at sticking up for yourself. Than I was."
Shad snorts. "Away from my family, yeah, I probably would be. My family /sucks/. Every time-honored, hide-bound, traditional bit of nonsense you can think of, they cling to it."
"Families suck no matter what," Gabe says firmly. "My parents don't care that I'm gay, but my mom freaks out that something bad is going to happen if I want to do /anything/, and she's basically said that if any of us stands for impression, she's basically never speaking to us again. I had a brother who died in a weyrling accident before I was born and... she's kind of nuts about it. I think my twin's gonna stand anyway though, next time there's eggs, if he can get permission." He smirks. "Mom's definitely going to flip out."
"You probably have a point." Shad agrees, then sort of stares for a second. " ... stand?" Faranth. That possibility had NEVER occurred to him, despite being in a Weyr now. Be Searched? Stand? Have a chance at ...
Gabrion nods his head. "Yeah. We were born here; there's no reason he can't get permission, unless he seriously ticks someone off between now and then, you know?" He doesn't seem aware of what a revelation this idea is for Shad; it's old hat to him.
Ok, it might not have been every kid's dream in Crom, but for Shad, to be a dragonrider still holds an appeal ... but it's a circumstance he's never aspired to reach. He'll mull it all over later. "You're lucky." He settles for.
"Eh," Gabe says, and shrugs. "It's the interval. Not near as many eggs, so it's worse odds. Of course, they don't search as many from outside the weyr. You could probably get searched, if you wanted," he adds as an afterthought. "I mean hell, I bet Pax'd say Yyth picked you, if you asked him to." That comment is just a hair short of being snide. "But if not, I could ask my dad. You could find someone, if you really wanted."
Shad shrugs. "I ... never really thought beyond being a Smith. Being a rider was so far out of the realm of possibility it was pathetic ... not to mention I'd have gotten beat to within an inch of my life if anyone found out I aspired to that. So I never really gave it any thought."
"Ah. Well. Then you'd for-sure get to stay," Gabe points out, but he shrugs. His glass is empty. He pours a little more wine in it - not too much. "You got brothers, sisters, anything, back home?" he asks. "Or just the parents?"
Shad grins almost evilly, clearly anticipating a reaction. "I have six sisters and five brothers."
Gabrion boggles. "Wow, your parents didn't get much rest, did they?" he cracks, and laughs aloud. "Any of them cool, or they all like your parents?"
"My mom didn't, no. Actually, some of them are only half-siblings ... dad wore his first wife right out, then remarried." Shad says. "A couple of them are alright. The youngest of my sisters is pretty cool, and one of my brothers ... one of the half-brothers."
Gabrion winces. "Yikes," he says. "Wow. Yeah, women in weyrs don't have that many kids. Counting the dead one my mom had four of us, and that's kind of a lot. But two of us are twins, so. Well, that's good you got some that are okay? You should write to them."
Shad nods. "My dad's a real ... holdover from the whole 'women's place is barefoot, pregnant, and silent' thing. Made the house a real laugh riot, trust me. I might try to get Orinala, that's my sister, out of there if I can. She's a bit of a rebel, and it's going to get her killed, if she stays."
"Oh," Gabe says, sobered by that thought. "Yeah. Well, yeah. That's probably not a bad idea. Or she could apprentice, right? How old is she?"
"She's nineteen." Shad says. "And she probably could, to the Weavercraft. She's good. But ... like I said, my dad's a real holdover. Women, to his mind, shouldn't be in the Crafts, so she was never allowed to apprentice. None of the girls were."
"That sucks," Gabrion says bluntly, appalled. "They couldn't just... go anyway?"
"How? It's /Crom/. And they spent their entire childhoods getting told their future. Most of them never looked past that, that I know of. Orinala's the only one I know for sure. And she has no resources, no way to get out, and as long as she's in Crom, where our family can get their claws into her ... " He trails off. "Shards, /I/ had to resort to being found out to be gay to get out of there."
"You should get a ride, and go get her," Gabe says. "Just get her and leave. You know? Before anyone can say anything."
Shad sort of blinks. "I can ... do that?"
Gabrion shrugs. "If you can get a rider to help you, sure. I mean, your dad'll probably get pissed off and complain to K'del, and he'll waffle around about it and you might get yelled at or something but nothing'll really happen. K'del's kind of a wuss," Gabe says with another shrug. "Just my opinion."
Oh. Yes. Well ... Shad is not going to be doing anything to earn K'del's ire for a while. But he will definitely consider it once things calm down. Hopefully, Orinala can last that long. "Huh. I'll have to see if I can get someone to agree to it."
"Bet P'ax would," Gabe suggests. "He's cool about stuff like that, and doesn't care about pissing people off."
"I'll see if he's willing." Shad says, knowing he might not be. P'ax has been more than strange around him.
Gabrion picks up the bottle and waggles it, offering Shad more wine.
Shad considers, then nods and holds out the glass. "A bit more." He says.
Gabrion pours, judiciously. "Glad you came over," he says after a bit of silence.
"So'm I. I'd really like to have an actual friend here, you know?"
Gabrion nods his head. He knows. "Yeah," he says. But then he smirks. "And hey, there's always P'ax, too."
"I'm not so sure he's actually, you know, a friend. He's been acting kind of strange, but I'm not sure if that's just him, or what." Shad says.
"He is weird sometimes," Gabe agrees, and adds, "He sleeps with everyone," for some reason.
Shad snickers. "I kind of got that impression." He's not going to tell Gabe the two of them did some heavy petting. Nuh uh. "Though it's good to know it might be just him, and not aimed at me in particular."
"Nope. Not just you," Gabe confirms. "But that's good, I wondered if he'd like, told you or whatever." He seems to know they did /something/.
"Told me what?" Shad wants to know.
"That he sleeps around," Gabe explains patiently.
"Oh, that. No, he didn't say it explicitly, but ... " Shad grins. "Wasn't too hard to guess from the comments he made, and the way he looks at guys."
Gabrion snorts. "Yeah, definitely," he agrees. "Not too hard."
Shad snickers. "Though I'll admit it took me about ... two days? To realize he WAS flirting. Not used to seeing that, you know?"
"Really?" Gabe finds that hard to believe. "He's like, the most obvious ever."
"Yeah, really. I'm not used to guys flirting with guys, remember?" Shad says. "It threw me."
Gabrion rolls his eyes. "You'll get used to it."
Shad chuckles. "Yeah, I know I will. It's ... nice, actually. Don't know as I'll have the nerve to do it myself anytime soon, but it's fun to watch."
Gabrion gestures at the wine bottle. "Drinking helps," he says with a smirk. "Not too much though, but just enough."
Shad chuckles. "Sorry, Gabrion. Not going to flirt with you. At least, not until you're at least a year older."
Gabrion gives Shad an impatient look. "That's not what I was saying. Faranth. I'm fifteen in three months, alright? I'll throw a sharding party so you don't miss the date."
Shad laughs. "Sorry, Gabrion, sorry." He says, taking another sip.
Gabrion mutters something, but then he gets out a deck of cards and teaches Shad a game for two players (money doesn't even need to change hands) and the two spend a companionable evening until it's time for bed.