dumbshow | highly new, slightly improved open post

[Please, Emil, he's not five! He'll eat his chicken when he wants to eat his chicken, which is why he... grabs yet another fry. He is proving a point. ...A dumb one.]

I will.

[Or maybe he won't, because after eating, like, four more gravy-dipped fries, of course his attention turns right to the cake. He's eaten a good amount of normal-ish food? For him, anyway. Surely he deserves a break... a chance to try the best-looking thing on the table...

Yeah, he's going for it, but first he's going to poke it with a fork a few times. He has to separate the layers, you know? See what's really going on, all while he wonders if he's saying too little. Proooobaby? It's not something that normally concerns him; silence is, in his opinion, absolutely golden, but again: the more time he spends with Emil, the more he realizes that he... kind of cares... what Emil thinks. About this outing, and about him. ...Friendship is wild.]

...Do you... come here very often? With people? [Mmph.] ...Friends.

[Nice. This is casual conversation at its finest! He is not wondering how talkative Emil's other friends may or may not be as he carves off the tiniest bite of cake.]

[Why? Why did he buy the tendies if not to eat them? Lalli is truly a mysterious creature. Emil is eating his meal like an adult, while he watches Lalli peel at his cake. This is honestly distracting him from whatever next topic he was going to babble about, like, how they have a food section in the store if Lalli wants to buy some of that gravy he's so generally-okay with— but the cake parts... Hmm...

Sure is an odd boy, that Lalli from IT. But Emil only watches, and doesn't judge, nor does he understand but only the judgment-free part is relevant.]

Oh, uh, [be honest, or try to seem cool?? They are in an Ikea,] nnno. You're the first! And only.

[Friend at Ikea, or friend general? Both, but he's not going to come right out and say that first thing.]

[He might just nibble on a tendie when he's done with his cake! Let him do as he pleases, which currently involves removing apple slice after apple slice while thinking about being the first person to accompany Emil to... this furniture store. That must make him the first person to call Ikea stupid to Emil's face...]

Aha. [And now, prepare yourself for Lalli's Very Accurate Conclusion:] ...You don't talk to many Finnish people.

[Otherwise he would've dragged fifty people out here to try and prove them wrong! Anyway, good luck following Lalli's logic.]

[Hmm... that's... technically true, but definitely not exclusive to Finns. For some reason, Emil is critically invested in the opinions of this weird boy dissecting his cake, and so he feels like he should... clarify? Somehow.]

Well, I guess not? You know how my Finnish sounds. [Horrid. If he had 50 Finnish friends, surely he'd suck less at the language by now.] But I meant, uhhh... I haven't really had friends since school.

[He didn't have friends in school either, but details!]

[Non-Finns will always butcher the Finnish language, The End, but—oh. That's not the type of response Lalli was expecting, which is why he puts his cake dissection on hold in order to look back over at Emil. A... joke? One of those things Lalli never picks up on?

Apparently not! Which makes sense, actually, when he considers how much time Emil has spent with the least sociable person in the building (re: him) as opposed to literally anyone else. ...Well. There's a quiet hum before he goes back to cutting stuff in half. What to say, what to say...]

...I haven't, either. [A pause as he pops a piece of apple into his mouth and thinks back to his school days, before:] Except for my cousins.

[A quiet admission that a) doesn't count and b) he doesn't sound all that bothered by. Look at these two losers sitting in a fucking Ikea... a Nordic tragicomedy...]

Hah, right, your cousins who like to stare at me.

[Those cousins. Maybe one day he'll actually say hello to them, and... maybe make an impression that isn't immediately embarrassing, if he's very lucky. Maybe! For now, they're just the Staring Finns, who judge him from a distance.

At least this Finn, his Favorite Finn, will judge him from across a table or office desk or display room couch-- and so on. Emil is relieved, in a strange way, that they're both friendless idiots - now that he's admitted it, he can relax! And without worrying that Lalli is just pitying him with this outing, which... could have been possible...

Yeah, no. Well then. He looks down and pokes at his food for a moment with an odd little smile on his face, pleased— but he isn't grinning like a fool when he looks up again.]

Well now you have me, and I have you. So we're both doing better now than we were before.

[That was just the Hotakainen Hello, Emil! Get used to it, friend. ...Friend. This obviously isn't the first time Lalli has thought about Emil being his friend, but hearing Emil openly acknowledge it—after smiling down at his food like a weirdo—is... definitely different. New. Like, he has an actual friend, and the friend is apparently... happy? To have him as a friend, too?? Mind-blowing, especially considering how little he's (thought he) cared about such things in the past.

...Okay, so maybe doing better isn't the stretch he initially thought it was. Hmm!]

Mm. We are, [he agrees, somewhat surprised at himself? It's right there in his tone, which is probably why he feels the need to follow it up with a firm:] ...But no more Ikea.

[Even though he's eating this apple cake at a steady pace.]

[Wow, love him the way he is, including his weird faces and love of furniture. Anyway, that little agreement is all Emil needs to be satisfied, so he can leave the soft dingus zone and go back to the regular dingus zone, which is the part where he acts like taking your only friend to Ikea is not a weird thing to do at all.]

Why not? You're having an okay time.

[There's food, and soft couches... It's a great place to be! And a great place to be Swedish, which is a special Emil privilege.

Alright, though; he'll bring up that other thing from before instead.]

You mentioned coming over next time? To my place?

[An okay time eating the apple slices plucked from the inside of this cake and feeling oddly pleased with everything as a whole. So maybe it's true! Maybe, but this tacky store is still Too Loud and Too Crowded.

Which means that Emil's place... sounds even better than it did, what, a whole fifteen minutes ago?]

Yes? [What Of It.] When I have another day off.

[And this is where a normal human being would be like, "And when you're free, of course!" This, however, is Lalli! Manners... are things that other people have, which is why he stabs another apple slice and looks back over at Emil. Things are going well now, so, like...]

Next weekend.

[It is decided.]

[Yes, asking when Emil is free would have been the nice and mannerly thing to do, but they just discussed having no other friends, so... what would Emil have planned? Looking at his motorcycle for a whole weekend? That sounds awesome, but he can do that whenever.

In any case, the confirmation of when Next Time will be is what he was angling for, so good! Plans successfully made.]

Sure! You pick what we should watch, and I will order the food.

[Lalli does not get a choice in this part, but Emil will make sure he has sweets and tendies with fries on reserve just in case.]

[No say in the food? Good call, Emil. Good call, even though he wonders what weird take-out he's going to eat. Ikea To-Go...]

Fine.

[He supposes he can DEAL with that, and yet ...Hmm. Hmm. He's chewing very thoughtfully over there, eyes flicking up toward the ceiling as he considers his catalog of options. Does he watch a lot of television? Yes, and he has excellent taste, but—]

...How much time will we have?

[Does he need to pick a movie? A mini series? Can they make it through half of a really, really good series once the plot starts picking up??? This is important!]

[What kind of viewing experience is Lalli plotting already... Emil is dimly surprised by the question - is this a normal thing people ask? No, definitely not - and so it takes him a moment to fumble his words before he comes up with an answer.]

I- well, however much you want? How early did you want to come over?

[Or will he have to stay up all night watching whatever Lalli's pick is? Let a guy know.]

[Does Lalli wake up at a reasonable hour, or does Lalli spend the better part of his time off asleep? Hmm! Anyway, give him a second to think here... to hazard a guess as to how far away Emil's place is from his own, and to determine whether or not he wants to watch some mind-blowing piece of art or, like, start this viewing session off easy. Tough call...]

We should watch five episodes. At least. [HMM—] ...Four o'clock?

[Even with an hour for dinner, they'd be done by ten! Easy! Never does he stop to think that watching five episodes at once isn't everyone's idea of fun.]

[Five... episodes! What! What is this, is this some kind of Finnish torture? This show better be incredible for Emil to spend several hours of his life on it, whatever it is.

Is he going to ask? No, he's deathly afraid of Lalli canceling plans on him if he looks the slightest bit disinterested. He'll just think of the food he's going to order, and maybe convince Lalli to watch something else when they're already at his place... Perfect plan.]

Alright. I'll... get some extra snacks.

[Nice! Everything is settled, and for the first time in Lalli's adult life, he has... actual plans. Not, like, plans to go grocery shopping with his cousins, but actual plans with an actual friend. And to think he once thought he'd rather sit in his room than bother with this stuff...

Well, he's excited! That's another weird new thing for him to think about later, but for now—snacks.]

You should. Cookies are good? [...Well.] Or cake.

[Because the slice of cake he's been picking at is almost entirely gone now... sad...]

[Snacks are simple, he can deal with snacks. One day Emil will take Lalli to the grocery store for yet another exciting pseudo-date. They can buy marshmallows or something.]

A whole cake for a snack? Fine, fine.

[His poor wallet... Maybe he'll get a cheesecake sampler or something, that would be slightly more reasonable.]

I think we'll have fun! [somehow, in s i x h o u r s ]

[A whole cake sounds perfect? Maybe when Tuuri catches wind of this show-watching date, she'll make Lalli bring over some sweets or something. Only one person in this family knows the definition of the word courtesy.

Anyway, having fun... doesn't seem impossible, considering that Lalli has had a better-than-okay time so far today. How strange. There might just be... the tiniest hint of a smile...]

Mm. It's a very good show.

[Surely that's what he meant by that. But now that his cake is through and his fries are, unfortunately, cold, he looks back over to Emil's plate. He's not even going to bother with his tendies, because he's a grown man and he can do what he wants.]

Are you done?

[He's just wonderin'. But are they getting cinnamon rolls, or should we just skip to their dumbass date... choose your own adventure...]

[Emil is going to pack up those tendies to go and serve them back to Lalli in a week, jesus! No, but he sees this, and he knows in his heart he's going to go several extra miles more than he has to and order too much dinner for Lalli to eat any of it, especially after cake— but he will lament that when the time comes!]

I'll trust your judgment, I guess? I'm done.

[And they can go get cinnamon rolls and then look at weird lamps until it's time to get cozy on the motorcycle again. Emil takes Lalli home, badgers him in front of his own house until he gets his number to text him his address, and then he's off. The big date... is so soon...

Of course, he doesn't come around to see Lalli at work any less, because Emil is not a person who acknowledges "too much company" as a thing that really happens. He does manage to control himself and not spend all their lunches throughout the week talking about The Weekend, but it comes up maybe once or twice. Food stuff, see - he has to be thorough.

When The Weekend finally comes around, Emil is ready to have fun on this maybe-a-date at, like, noon, and so spends the hours before Lalli shows up thinking about all the ways this could go terribly wrong. He goes out and buys a cake? And then he buys cookies, too, despite himself. The cake goes in his fridge and the cookies sit on the coffeetable, which is not even Ikea quality, and is definitely something he got for less than ten dollars at Scandinavian Walmart and had to put together with the back end of a screwdriver because he forgot to buy a hammer. That's the caliber of interior decoration Emil's apartment has - he wasn't lying when he mentioned having mismatched things from his childhood bedroom still because he can't afford better ones.

But his couch is very comfortable, and this is where he will agonize until Lalli arrives. He's even agonizing on the way to the door; how long should he wait before answering? How soon is too eager?? Oh well too late now!!!]

—Hey! [friend] Come in!

[Ah, yes—The Weekend. Lalli doesn't spend his week willing the days to pass by any faster than they already are, but it's undeniably nice to have something to... look forward to? Whether he's telling someone to restart their computer for the fiftieth time or picking at his dinner while his cousins chit-chat across the table, The Weekend is a pleasant thought that occasionally pops into the forefront of his mind. Spending more time with Emil outside of work is, hmm... exciting. Maybe.

Or maybe it's the most exciting thing ever, if Tuuri is to be believed. Of course she questions him about both his Ikea adventure and the Swede with the good hair when he returns; the answers are... less than satisfactory, thanks to Lalli's habit of keeping responses short and to the point, but learning about The Weekend more than makes up for it. Does she give him a brief shake? Maybe. Does she tell him that a) normal people do not watch five episodes in a row and b) he should start with one episode and see where it goes from there? Definitely. "You don't want to scare your first friend away," she tells him, one of those well-meaning but, um, rather rude Tuuri-isms that he takes no real notice of... because Emil likes him.

So when The Weekend finally rolls around, he's not particularly worried about anything aside from, like, Emil's place being somewhat hard to find. It isn't, thank goodness; he finds it with ease, so maybe he's even a little early when he knocks on the door... but Emil doesn't seem to mind? He's smiling. ...Blindingly so, which is why Lalli blinks at him for a good second or two before finally offering up a very impressive:]

Hi.

[And inside he steps! Should he take off his coat... nah, he's just going to look around at everything for a bit, don't mind him. So this is Emil's space! Hmm! ...Cozy. His eyes fall right on those cookies sitting on the table, but before he gets too distracted—]

...Thank you. [What was it Tuuri told him to say again... jeez...] For... having me?

[Is it obvious that he was COACHED??]

[Oh. Oh, it's obvious. It takes Emil a second to realize that's what's happening here - he's never actually met Tuuri, after all, he'd never guess this was her hobby - but it's... endearing, when he does. Kind of? It's not like he spends time with Lalli because of his sparkling, perfect manners.]

You're welcome, but it's not that formal. It's just my place!

[With his squishy couch and mismatched furniture and the vaguest hint of being hastily tidied for The Weekend. He shuts the door behind Lalli and then watches him... stand there... Boy.]

Lalli, your coat.

[Give him that, then wander freely. It's not a very big Place.]

...Aha.

[Don't worry, Lalli's totally forgotten the other, like, twenty things Tuuri told him to definitely say. As soon as he shrugs off his coat and hands it over to Emil, he's back to being his normal self—which means that he will meander over to the coffee table and awkwardly stand there for a few seconds, because hey, he walked a few feet? He's doing great.

Eventually, though, he'll wander over to peer into the kitchen, then back toward what he assumes to be the bedroom—but he won't actually go back there. The couch... is calling to him, which is why he'll fall back onto it and allow himself to sink right in. Comfy... yep, he's sold, but how to communicate this??]

I like it here. It's... quiet. [Hmm, what's another good adjective—] Small.

[Leave it to Lalli to point out the obvious! But he's not saying it in a bad way; he likes little space, which is why he's slowly relaxing here on this couch.]

[There goes the boy... Emil, a loser, is distracted for a moment just watching Lalli wander haltingly around his apartment before he turns to hang up the coat. There's the boy! In his apartment!! Emil crosses to the couch, leaning against the arm of it and looking down at Lalli sinking into said couch like he could literally melt into it.

Small, though. Thanks, he's poor these days...]

Hah, well. I'm glad you like it. Do you want something to drink? I have juice.

[Juice: drink of cool guys who hang out with friends on Weekends. He gestures mildly at the cookies in the meantime, which is supposed to convey that Lalli can help himself if he's willing to pull himself out of the recesses of the couch. Eat, skinny boy.]

[What is tact? Can you eat it? Or: Lalli doesn't realize that honesty isn't always the best policy, so this is Emil's life now. At least he nods when Emil offers to grab him some juice? Sugar: that's exactly what he needs, especially once he claws his way far enough forward to grab the entire thing of cookies. The table... is much too far; it's easier to just, you know, plop the cookie container right here on his lap while he waits for his drank.

But when Emil fiiiiiinally returns, glasses of juice presumably in hand, Lalli stops munching on his second—yes, second—cookie in order to tilt his head back and blink up at his friend. Welcome back? Put those drinks on the table and sit beside him, please... he'll even hold out a fresh cookie as a sort of trade.

Oh, but actually—]

...What kind is it?

[Apple? Orange?? One of those gross berry medleys? He's dying.]

[It's grapefruit, perish. No, it's give Emil two seconds to realize Lalli isn't going to just take this glass like a normal person, so he does have to set the other one down on the table and sit down himself. Gee...

He takes the cookie, which he paid for and which Lalli is now holding out like it's currency, but gee.]

Are you going to make me drink both of these? [Ask before he pours them, next time??] It's apple. With some vanilla.

[Just Swedish things?? Be glad it's not yet another lingonberry thing, because Swedes are a broken record when it comes to shoving lingonberries in everything.]

[Love him as he is, embrace him for his weirdness, etc, etc. And watch him screw up his face a bit as he considers this, because apple and vanilla? ...Huh. He's more of a plain juice kind of guy, but, well... it could be worse. Plus Emil must like it, so—]

No? I'll drink mine.

[He's just not super excited about it, but details, details. He's going to sink back into this couch, continue monching on this cookie, and glance over at the television before looking back over at Emil. Should he, like... start the show? Do normal people chat a bit before jumping right into it? What's the protocol here... at least moving all around Ikea saved him from this level of awkwardness...]

Are you... ready?

[Again: love him as he is, embrace him for his weirdness, etc, etc.]

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