Characters/Pairing: Warren, Layla, Will, Magenta, Zach and Ethan.
Summary: From the outside, it looks like Warren has a big, stable group of friends, but don't ask him about it.
Author's Note: Inspired by the prompt 'Any fandom, getting along with someone in your friend group that you don't particularly like.' 656 words.
The Art of Getting Along: shallowness
Don't ask Warren Peace how to make friends. He'll just look at you like he can't believe you asked such a question, and, really, he won't have an answer. Yeah, it looks like he's got a big, stable group of friends, despite his grouchy demeanor, and I can see why you'd ask him, but don't.
What happened was this: Layla Williams decided he wasn't the scariest guy in the Sky High school cafeteria and her friends trailed along, like multicolored ducklings, and they kept coming up to him and staying around. Until he gave up and there were days where he approached them, singly or in a group. They became friends.
Warren might suggest that you asked Layla about how to make friends. She seemed to have the knack of it.
But then, she was likeable. You had to be a supervillain in the making or really dumb to want to hurt her. Warren was not dumb. Warren was still trying to work out if Will Stronghold, now Layla's boyfriend, and therefore definitely in the gang of friends, was dumb. He'd seemed dumb when they'd first encountered each other, but maybe it was just shaking down at high school. And maybe Warren had been prejudiced about someone who shared the same surname as the superhero who'd brought down his own father.
Still, there was that time when Will had hurt Layla, but Warren had to admit Stronghold had cut that out.
The gang of friends also consisted of Magenta, Layla's best girl-friend and talking buddy. Occasionally they required someone else to join in their endless exchange of views. A super of few words, Warren fit in fine on that front. Actually, he quite liked Magenta too. Sometimes, she showed just enough edge to be interesting. Claws, even, which was funny considering she shifted into a guinea pig.
But whenever Warren grinned at something Magenta said, or caught her eye because Layla was being too idealistic for the real world, the Glow-worm would puff up, like he was a Glow-cobra, which obviously he wasn't. Warren wondered if Zach would ever work out that getting on with a girl wasn't hitting on her and the best way of losing Magenta was not trusting her. Given Zach's evident relief when Warren started dating a girl from his class, the freshman wasn't there yet.
The reason Warren hadn't created a fireball and made the point forcefully was that it would be too ridiculous, and Warren was trying to be less of a jerk, less like the bullying Speed and Lash, to save it for the bad guys, not the weak ones. And Zach's weakness was because he cared, and Warren could respect that.
So, it might be tough to have a conversation with Zach that didn't include the words 'Magenta says' or 'Will said' or 'my father told me', and Warren internally winced every time the kid did that, because Warren's father was locked up in solitary, so they sure hadn't talked, but Warren found he was still talking to Zach, at the cafeteria, in corridors – even out of school.
And then there was Ethan, who could also babble about the randomest stuff, stuff that Warren was deeply uninterested in. They were never going to start a book club together because they'd never find anything they'd both want to read. Besides, Warren's reading time at school had been severely cut down because of all these friends, with their urge to talk, to pour out their teenage angst, their school woes and dumb jokes.
Last Friday, Layla and Magenta caught Warren out half-smiling at Ethan, riffing off Nurse Spex. It only happened briefly. Zach ruined the moment by trying to high five Ethan, but there was a reason Will drew Warren as one of the gang in his dumb comics. Whether he liked all the others or not – and Warren did more than he would admit – he was one of them.