Okay sure she had a good feeling about this dude but she didn't expect that.

"I...", she starts. "Thanks, but I'm short enough that you're not gonna bump me with my legs tucked, and I don't wanna keep those two from holding hands."

"They pine," she finishes with a brief, wry grin at Joshua, before turning and sticking her tongue out at Sable and Maya for a moment.

Maya just laughs and smiles and squeezes Sable's hand.

Sable, meanwhile, lets out a brief startled giggle, before firing back, "As if you don't!"

Hailey just snickers and teases Sable more. "Not like you two. Half hour, give or take ten, and y'all start gazing needily, without fail."

She flushes a bit, smiles, and giggles.

"Well, I'm certainly not going to push." 

They're all very sweet together. It's nice just to be near them. He feels a bit like a cat basking in the sun.

He tries in a way they're really not used to seeing so clearly, so she's contemplating keeping him around.

"Stupid obvious introductory question is obvious: got a favorite class?"

"My favorite this year is ancient history, I think. We're learning about the Pelopennesian War right now and it's really interesting."

He resists the urge to infodump. He could dump so much info, though. He's skipped school during the unit and ended up marathoning Yale's course on greek history on three separate occasions. They just upload recordings of their first year lectures onto YouTube, its great! He's most of the way through it now.

"Ooh? I don't know much at all about the Pelopennesian War."

"No complaints here. Had me at 'war history', dude."

Maya just nods with an interested smile.

Okay he can absolutely infodump to them about the Pelopennesian War. So! A lot of the interesting bits are actually in the lead up, you need to know a bit about how ancient Greek city states worked. And specifically a bit about Athens. It's really important to understanding the Pelopennesian War that Athens was kind of all-in on their navy and Sparta was much more effective on land. Also here, have some information about how Greek Hoplites fought and the tradeoffs between depth and breadth. Okay he's being sidetracked he'll get back to the actual war things.

The entire time he's explaining things he's animated. He's careful not to brush against Hailey or get anywhere close, though. His face comes alive, he gestures expansively with his hands, at one point he grabs a bit of paper to draw the shape of the Long Walls of Athens. Athens wasn't directly on the coast because you didn't want your city to be easy to raid by sea, usually Greek cities were founded on hills near but not directly on the ocean. They couldn't win on land so they just made a set of absurdly long walls to connect their city to the harbour. Behold the longness of the walls!

He can give them a narrative of the war! It's not a polished one since he hasn't practiced explaining the Pelopennesian War to people but he can do a pretty okay job! 

Maya nods along, paying particular attention to the structural decisions of the fortifications.

While Hailey gets swept up in the strategic tradeoffs, and asks him to explain a few of the decisions more if he can.

Sable, meanwhile, is just delightedly soaking all of this up, enjoying how animated Joshua and Hailey are. Anytime the discussion seems to stall or slow down, she asks a question about something related to kick off more infodumping and engaging.

Hailey manages to eat her lunch while all this goes on: a pair of delicious-smelling roast chicken sandwiches. The other girls' lunches are not quite as good, but still tasty too.

Joshua does not visibly eat anything but he sure does slowly drain that thermos.

He can expand on things some! It's nice to have people interested in his infodumps. This is not very common and he's happy about the change of pace.

Well, see, he wanted to infodump about something in the vague neighborhood of her special interest. Also Sable's a very sweet dork who just likes seeing people excited about things.

They can pass an enjoyable lunch period this way.

It's nice. He likes the three of them and is really enjoying getting to infodump and also get to know them some. Spending more lunches like this would be really nice.

He doesn't himself make even one single overture in the direction of doing this again or in any way indicate interest in doing so. That would open the possibility of rejection and he avoids doing things like that usually without even realizing he's doing so in the moment.

Joshua might not bring it up, but as lunch comes to an end, the girls exchange some looks.