You've Got a Friend in Me (Eddie)

[Deleted]

Todd was wandering around. He didn’t really need to be anywhere and Jake the turtle was napping so he couldn’t play with him outside or anything so he was wandering. Hopefully he would run into people. Todd liked people as a general rule, though he wasn’t always sure they’d like him. His mother had always been inclined to think that everyone was her friend. Todd took after his father much more and tried to make everyone like him.

Hey! There were always people at the gym! And turtles would get very lost or crushed if they were in the gym, so it was probably a good thing that Jake was napping. He wouldn’t want him to get hurt. And hurt turtles weren’t good for making people like him.

So Todd opened the door to the gym, only to find that there was only one person in here. That was a little disappointing, but it was cool. At least there was someone here. And one person was better than no one. If there was no one around then there would be no one to like him. Maybe this guy would like poetry too. Todd really liked poetry.

“Hey,” Todd said brightly with a smile. “What are you doing there?” Todd couldn’t really see the other boy all that well. He hoped he didn’t scare him. That would be terrible. And then the other boy probably wouldn’t like him. Man, he really needed to think things out before he just did things.

[eddie]

Eddie continually held on to a desperate hope that one morning he'd wake up and all his clumsiness, lack of coordination and general failure would have magically disappeared in the night and he'd actually be able to do things again. He'd heard about people growing into their body, and had decided that maybe that was the case with him, he needed to grow into the control over his gangly limbs.

So far it hadn't worked, but that didn't stop him periodically trying out things he could never do before, in case he'd found a sudden knack - even the slightest bit of improvement would have sent him into giddy fits of delight. There very often wasn't even that.

Today he was trying to swing a sword about - a wooden one, he'd already learnt that lesson, but he was still finding that even the simplest swings had none of the grace or effectiveness of any of the rest of his family's. He would swing too wide and hit the floor, miss the dummy target he'd set up, hit himself or drop the sword almost every time he tried. He pretended to thrust at the dummy and tripped over his own feet, just as somebody spoke.
He was almost grateful for an excuse, and scrambled to his feet.

"Sorry, you, uh, startled me." He explained with an enthusiastic nod. "That's why I fell, because I was surprised, it made me ... fall..." he trailed off. He'd never been very good at lying.

"I was training." he finally said pathetically.

[Deleted]

Todd could tell that the other boy was lying. It wasn’t very hard to tell, but he decided to play along. You know? Whatever made people feel good. And Todd didn’t want people to feel bad. Then they wouldn’t like him and want to be his friend. That was not what Todd wanted.

“Oh, sorry about that. I can see how that could be very startling, causing you to fall over. Sorry about that. Next time I’ll announce myself before I enter, in case I startle someone else. Wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt on my account.” He was rambling now, but both of his parents had a tendency to do that so…it was inevitable that Todd did too. But it was good natured rambling. Not quite nonsensical, but almost.

“Training’s cool,” Todd said, immediately following his rambling. He had however taken a moment to breathe in between rambling and talking again. “What are you training for? I’m training to become a poet. But I’m not that great yet. But I hope I will be. I really like poetry.” It was true, Todd really liked poetry, but he didn’t know if this boy liked poetry. What if he hated poetry? That would not be very good. Then he probably wouldn’t want to be Todd’s friend and that was very disappointing.

“Well, I mean, poetry’s great and all, but there are other things that are great too. Like cookies. My parents sent me some with peanut butter and chocolate chips. They’re great.” There. That was much better. Who didn’t like cookies?

[eddie]

If Eddie were smarter, he would wonder if Todd was being serious or if he was trying to make fun of him for his rubbish excuse. Luckily, Eddie wasn't smarter, and he just accepted that Todd had actually believed him, and beamed like an idiot.
Even the rambling didn't phase him, being prone to it himself, and he nodded along in enthusiasm as if Todd was being completely interesting - which, to Eddie, he was, with his attention span and, well, simple mind, it wasn't difficult to interest him.

"Poetry is cool," he said politely "I was training with the sword," he waved said sword in the air, nearly dropping it."It's... swordy." he added, and at least at that point he winced at his own idiocy - but perked up immediately on mention of cookies.

"Cookies are awesome." he agreed "We always have cookies when we play D&D, have you ever played D&D?"

[Deleted]

“Swords are cool too,” Todd agreed readily, nodding emphatically. Swords were pretty awesome actually. All those knights in the stories his mother used to tell him had used swords. Though his mother had warned him that swords were dangerous, so he wasn’t allowed to play with them. Todd thought the other boy must have really cool parents if they let him train with swords. That was really awesome as far as Todd was concerned, even if he wasn’t very good at it.

“D&D?” Todd asked interested. “I’ve never heard of that so I probably haven’t played it. What is it? Is it a board game? Board games are pretty cool. Unless you’re not interested in those kind of games. I don’t really know any games or anything. My parents just sing all the time. Sometimes that become a game. You know, see who can the longest about cookies or something. But D&D sounds awesome. Do you play with other people?”

Todd rambled a lot and didn’t really get to the point, but he just wanted people to like him, even if he did ramble all the time. But in his defense, he couldn’t really help the rambling. That was like in his genes or something. But he liked the other boy already. He seemed nice. And he got to play with swords. What could be better?

[eddie]

For once, Eddie's lack of ability for anything actually sort of worked for him, where a more intelligent person might be completely lost following Todd's rambling train of thought, Eddie found that it was so similar to the way that he often thought, it was easy to keep up with, and he nodded along enthusiastically - it certainly helped that Todd appeared interested in his mention of D&D.

"It's sort of a board game, only not really because you don't really use a board, you have characters sheets and books, but you do use dice just like a lot of board games so it's not all that different, and it's a lot of fun!" he grinned broadly "I play with my best friend Gaston, when he's here, he's gone home for a bit but he'll be back soon, and we play with Meredith as well, and some of our other friends, but you should come and join in, you could be an elf or a mage or something cool like that."

It didn't occur to him to explain a bit more about what D&D actually was or what it involved, in fact Todd was lucky to get what little information he had shared.

[Deleted]

Todd’s thoughts had a tendency to meander. It was a wonder he could keep everything straight in his own head, but somehow he managed. It was a wonder that other people could follow his logic. At times his mother would have to remind him that he was rambling and she had no idea what he was talking about. So then he’d start over, ramble along until his mother kind of knew what he was talking about, but not really. So it was really great that Eddie could follow along.

Todd nodded along enthusiastically, though he really had no idea what Eddie was talking about. Character sheets and books? What were those for? But friends sounded great! Todd liked making friends. And Gaston and Meredith sounded cool. I mean, those were really cool names. Who didn’t want to be friends with people named Meredith and Gaston?

The best part was that Todd was being invited along. This was really just great. Wait until he told his dad! He’d be so proud! Although….he’d probably want to give things to his new friends and that was always a little weird, but whatever.

“Yeah, that would be awesome. Elves and mages are pretty cool.” Honestly, Todd had no idea what he was agreeing to, but elves were pretty awesome. And it kind of sounded like fun, so why not? Besides, if he didn’t agree then the other boy probably wouldn’t like him very much. And then what would Todd tell his father?

[eddie]

"Great!" Eddie grinned so wide it almost looked like the top of his head was going to fall off. He may be completely useless at...well, everything, actually, but he was good at roleplay games!
Well ok actually he was pretty bad at them, and he usually had to have three or four characters every campaign because he made bad decisions and go them killed, or the dice just never seemed to roll in his favour, but he had fun even when he was bad at it, and nobody knew the manuals like he did, except maybe Gaston, but that was ok because Gaston was his best friend.

"What do you like to do? Maybe I could join in with that!" Eddie offered, wanting to make this new friendship (for he'd already decided that was what it was) equal, and besides, the more new things he tried out, the more likely he was to find something he could actually do.

[Deleted]

This was great! It seemed like the other boy wanted to be his friend and he hadn’t even tried very hard at all. Maybe his mom was right after all, that making friends really wasn’t all that hard. People did seem to be genuinely nice here. And he was going to meet these really cool sounding people who also played D&D, which sounded cool even though Todd still had no idea what it was.

But what did Todd like to do? Honestly he wasn’t really sure how to answer that question. Todd liked to do whatever everybody else liked to do. That was how things worked, you know? But Todd alone really liked poetry and music and writing poetry and reading and reciting poetry. You know, that’s kind of where the decision to be an English major came from. “Well, er…I haven’t really joined any glubs or anything yet. I’m not really sure what to join, though I was thinking about joining the Book Club or something like that. It’d be cool if you wanted to come too,” he offered. “But don’t feel like you have to.” Todd wouldn’t want him to feel like he had to come. If he wanted to come then that was an entirely different story.

[eddie]

Eddie was suddenly thrust into a tricky situation, because he really wanted to please his new friend and join in with things that he liked to do, especially since Todd was going to join in with the D&D group, which was awesome.
Unfortunately, one of the many, many talents that escaped Eddie completely was any sort of intelligence, he did try of course, but he just didn't have the attention span for books that didn't involve pictures or lots of bright colours like the comics he read, and while he really wanted to join in with his new friend, he could think of nothing worse than a club for reading. Unless he could read comics... or graphic novels, they were books right? That would work wouldn't it?

"Uh... sure!" He said enthusiastically. He could at least try, and maybe he could just pretend that he'd been reading real books, or something. He'd make it work.
Eddie usually threw himself headfirst into things with that reasoning, he'd yet to learn that it usually didn't end well for him.

"...wait." he suddenly realised "What's your name?"

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Todd didn’t mean to put Eddie in a sticky situation. He was just trying to share an interest of his. He couldn’t help that he loved reading and analyzing poetry and stuff like that. Really, if you thought about it, he was almost exactly like his parents. They sang and while Todd didn’t sing, poetry was very often similar to lyrics. And often the best lyricists were poets or, at the very least, wordsmiths.

But yeah, Todd would have never put Eddie in a strange place if he had known he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box (not that Todd minded about that. They could still be friends). But he was really glad that Eddie was going to give it a try. If he didn’t like it then they could try out something else. Anyway, they’d figure it out.

“Oh, sorry, I’m Todd,” he said suddenly realizing how rude it was of him not to introduce himself. He held out his hand for the other boy. “Sorry about that. I’m not usually that rude.”

[eddie]

"Oh that's ok." Eddie grinned "I didn't introduce myself either, and well since manners here are all so different because everybody's from different worlds, I suppose it only counts as being rude if you offend someone, even if you do something that you might consider rude, so as long as neither of us mind, neither of us are being rude!"

Eddie specialised in a kind of logic that made total sense and yet still someone seemed to be completely idiotic.

It took him a moment of pleased beaming to realise that he still hadn't actually introduced himself in return, and he took Todd's hand with a heart handshake - or at least, what he intended to be a hearty handshake, but was in fact just a bit too enthusiastic and uncontrolled to be the type that made a 'good' impression.

"Edward Locksley. Call me Eddie."

[Deleted]

Todd followed Eddie’s logic quite well and he nodded along. It was true that other people were from different worlds. I mean, he’d heard the story about a million times about how his mother had been pushed down a well by some mean old hag and ended up here in Tintagel. So it kind of made sense that other people from different places would think different things were rude.

Now that he thought about it, it was kind of like how different people interpreted poetry. One person could think that a poem was supposed to be interpreted one way, but someone else could interpret it another way entirely. So yeah, that actually made a lot of sense to Todd.

Eddie’s handshake was a little enthusiastic, but Todd was just rolling with it, like he did with many aspects of his life. And he wasn’t about to comment on it because then Eddie might not like him and Eddie seemed pretty nice.

“So Eddie, where are you from?” Todd asked, because Eddie had brought up the whole other world thing and it made Todd really curious. He’d heard there were people from all over. And most people like talking about where they were from, so that was always a good way to get on Eddie’s good side.

[eddie]

"I'm from Nottingham," Eddie responded happily, despite the fact that his home represented a world where he was constantly compared to the successes of the rest of his family, where he was surrounded by pressure to be just as impressive, to make his father proud, the one thing he had actually inherited was a fierce love for his land, Nottingham was his home and he adored it. "It's in England," he added, for clarification, though he wondered if Todd would even know where that was, it was so strange to him that someone might not have heard of England, but at the same time everybody came from such different worlds. Technically his best friend shouldn't have heard of it, since England didn't exist yet where Gaston came from.
He realised he'd let his mind wander and hadn't said anything else for a few moments, and then he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times in indecision because he wasn't sure what else to say.

"It's awesome." He eventually added, at a loss, and quickly carried on "What about you?"

[Deleted]

When Eddie said Nottingham Todd’s first thought was Robin Hood, because he was pretty well read and had read stories about the merry group of thieves, so the fact that Eddie was from the same place as Robin Hood, well, that was probably like the coolest thing ever! I mean really, what kid hadn’t wanted to be Robin Hood at least once in their life? Todd had when he’d been young. And though he didn’t want to be Robin Hood when he grew up (there were way too many people who didn’t like him after all) Todd still held great respect for his childhood hero.

He nodded. “Nottingham. Sounds awesome.” Then he shrugged at the question. “I’m from around here. My parents went to school here and then once they had their own happily ever after they settled down here. It’s not as cool as Nottingham though.”