“I’m Grant.”

Aremant doesn’t react at first, doesn’t dare to assume that someone could be talking to him. But then, when he feels a presence sit next to him on the bench, he looks up in equal parts surprise and suspicion. Grant, with a smile he isn’t sure quite reaches his eyes, repeats his introduction.

“Ah… hello, Grant.” Aremant is content to leave it at that, so he turns away once more.

“Hey,” Grant nudges Aremant’s shoulder with his own. “Don’t you know that telling me your name back is the polite thing to do?”

Aremant swallows thickly, unsure how to appropriately inform this silly Human that he won’t want anything to do with him if he knows his name. He doesn’t mean to sound rude, but he also know how these encounters go; they’re pointlessly inauthentic, but more than that they unfairly give false hope. Aremant has met his fair share of polite Humans. Instead of saying everything he wants to say, though, he just ends up saying, “I am Aremant.”

“It’s a pleasure.” They sit in silence for a moment, and Aremant finally relaxes, convinced that he has completed the obligatory stages of small talk. That is, until Grant begins to speak again. “So what are you in for?”

“I am receiving my communicator.” How odd that he has so much he wants to say, so much he feels needs to be said, and yet he can only manage to say the things that are expected of him.

Grant quirks a brow at Aremant, looking at him with no small amount of curiosity. He seems somewhat distracted, though. “You haven’t gone up yet? You should be able to just sign it out and leave.”

Aremant shifts, uncomfortable. Grant is being unnecessarily familiar with him, and it’s making his skin itch from how attentive he’s being. “I have not gone up to the desk yet.” An observation; no explanation, no excuse, no nonsense. Hopefully, it’s enough.

Grant absentmindedly runs his hands up and down his thighs. “I’ll go first. If you wait up for me, then I’ll hang around until you get yours, too. Sound like a deal?”

Aremant isn’t really sure what this deal accomplishes other than providing a solidarity pact, and all for what - to get a communicator that he probably won’t even use? One he plans on getting before he leaves, regardless? Somehow, though, the idea is appealing. Aremant wonders at that - maybe it’s because Grant seems to be treating this as a somewhat… daunting experience, too. Aremant glares at his lap, annoyed at his inexplicable uncertainty. “I… suppose. I’m not sure how agreeing will benefit either of us, though.”

Grant watches Aremant for almost longer than necessary before he smiles, full-wattage and surprisingly genuine. “I like to think of it as friendship.”

Aremant is stunned into silence as Grant jumps up and hurries to the desk. He half-considers bolting from the building and hiding somewhere until the coast is clear, but then he goes over the plan a second time and almost blanches at how pathetic and melodramatic it sounds, even to his own conscious brain. It’s almost as ridiculous as Grant trying to stake a claim of friendship on the grounds of mutual unjustified procrastination. He acted as if it were a perfectly normal way to bond. Maybe running would be a good idea, just in case thi Grant character turns out to be some sort of a madman.

The more he thinks about it, the less amusing it becomes. After all, what kind of normal person approaches someone like him of their own free will?

Grant returns with three pristine silvery-black objects cupped carefully in his hands. Two of the three look identical, like tiny cuffs that, as Grant places them cautiously into his ears, apparently settle over the tragus and rest just barely inside the ear. The third piece is a thin but strong-looking bracelet with a wrist-length interface. “I got the subspace caller,” Grant states conversationally as he clips it onto his wrist. “I figure that even if I am planet-bound I should get this one anyway. After all, it isn’t like I’m especially popular or anything.” He laughs a little. “What about you?”

The anxieties rush out of Aremant at once as he reminds himself that, logically, Grant is medically and emotionally sound if he is out on his own. He swallows thickly. “I’m unsure. I have no real use for a communicator.”

“You should get the subspace, then! You can only program one contact in it, but you can call that one contact from virtually anywhere in Known Space! Even if you don’t use it, I think it’s the more interesting one.”

Again, Aremant wonders why he is even here. There’s no reason for him to make this decision. No reason for him to have to make it. Not now nor ever, but especially not now, when he has no one on his side except for the disembodied voice of his province-mandated Modus Vivendi AI.

Somehow, he finds himself at the desk, allowing the worker to cuff his wrist and extract a sampling of his DNA. “Aremant xi Elesier.”

“I am here for my communicator.” His voice sounds oddly hollow, like he isn't actually mentally present.

“Interplanetary or subspace?”

He barely has to think - barely has time to even blink - before he unwittingly says: “Subspace.”