Okay, that little handsqueeze is sweet. And also Hailey's cackle means he isn't worried he's made some sort of social misstep. It's okay. It's fine.

He really wishes he swung in and out of strong emotions like that a little less. He can just sort of compress it all down into not much at all but that's work and he needs to be- braced for the need to do so. It's easier if he stops the emotions from growing rather than trying to tamp them down once they're established.

The blush is also cute. These are a very cute set of probably-girlfriends. 

"Thank you."

"Gladly. Oh, I'll probably make cocoa regardless, though. Call it encouragement."

"Definitely accept the cocoa," Hailey adds off-handedly. "There are a few things in the kitchen where Sable's just as good as I am. Cocoa's one."

Maya just nods and smiles.

"Well, gift cocoa I will not turn down. Especially the vaunted gift cocoa of tremendous goodness."

Oh god why did he say it like that why is he so bad at talking like a normal person.

Sable just giggles and grins and bumps her shoulder against his for a moment. "Then you shall have cocoa!"

Why would he want to talk like a normal person? Normal people miss out on so much fun!

Oh, yay! It made her giggle!

It's so nice when things go well. When he makes people laugh, when people think he's clever, when he's doing socialization right.

"Well, I had a rather calm and peaceful day," Maya comments serenely. "I did, however, get inspired to research one of my favorite naval battles in more detail."

"This is, of course, your fault," she adds, nodding at Joshua with a warm smile. "The discussion of the precautions Greek city-states took to prevent sea-raids put me back in the mood to enjoy some naval history."

One of her favourite naval battles? That's a thing she has? That's cool. He'd absolutely love to hear more about that. What makes it her favourite? What makes it cooler than all the other battles?

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the single largest naval battle of World War II, and arguably the largest in history. It featured six battleships, including three of her favorites: New Jersey, Iowa, and Washington. It also featured the three fiercest Fletcher-class destroyers and their destroyer-escort, Johnston, Hoel, Heermann, and Samuel B. Roberts, the four of whom engaged in a suicidally-brave counterattack against Japanese cruisers and battleships in defense of the escort carriers under their protection. In the process, these four ships sank, damaged, and drove off several ships orders of magnitude larger, including driving off the battleship Yamato, which had something in the neighborhood of thirty times the displacement of a Fletcher.

Those ships kept their carriers safe, terrified the IJN, and made them pay dearly for the privilege of even threatening the ships in their care.

Maya can — and will, if allowed — go on about Leyte for most of the remainder of the lunch period.

Modern history tends to be a lot less interesting to him but Maya's passion about it is helping bridge that gap. And everyone loves an underdog story. He has to ask a few clarifying questions about the various ship types and what they mean, what their roles are on the battlefield. But once Maya gets going he can mostly hold a picture of the battle in his head and excitedly ooh and aah at all the right moments. Wait, actually he has a pencil case, she can show the positions of all the ships using pencils!

He's absolutely willing to listen to her talk. It's fun. He's learning about history! He looks around occasionally to make sure that Sable and Hailey are having a good time too, mostly out of a deep seated sense that if you infodump everyone around you will find you boring and so he needs to be on the lookout for that happening to Maya and stop it happening somehow so she doesn't have to feel bad about it.

Hailey's absolutely digging into the strategic perspectives with sharp questions as Maya goes on.

And Sable is delightedly engaging as well, though she has a little bit of a sappy look on her face at times.

Oh. They're just- actually interested in this kind of thing. For real. Like he is.

Okay, then he doesn't need to worry. He can just enjoy the information and the fact that he has new friends (friends!!!) who share some of his interests.

He's going to go home and read up on Hannibal and the Fabian strategy and the whole Second Punic War plus some surrounding context and he's going to practice a lecture on it and then tomorrow he's going to get to share that with them. He's looking forward to it. But not so much he forgets to pay attention to Maya! He is going to commit as much of this battle information to memory as possible.

And thus ends another cheerful lunch period spent with their new friend. "See you tomorrow, Joshua!"

Hailey and Maya both wave as well.

He waves and heads off.

He realizes halfway through his next class he has no easy way of causing the conversation to be about the Second Punic War without just saying, "Hey, do you want to hear about some really cool military history?" This is a problem, since saying that is Terrifying. Well, he can just read up on things anyway and practice and see if there's some way to bring it up. And maybe just do the terrifying thing. Maybe it would go fine? Probably it would go fine Maya did basically that today. And he can just have the practice and reading up he did be secret so it isn't obvious how much it means to him and they won't judge him.

It's only been a month since he listened to favorite history podcast covering the Second Punic War, it's easy to catch himself back up to speed. So, what things should he include in the background? Obviously they should know the rough extent of Rome and Carthage. A tiny bit of the First Punic War. It's important that Rome won that one. And of course some of Hannibal's background, it really does add to the drama of the whole situation. And then the whole arc of Hannibal's campaign in Italy, the general shape, his absurd invincibility on the battlefield, Rome's refusal to stop feeding him armies. The whole thing with Fabius. And maybe ending on Hannibal losing to Scipio in Africa? He's not quite sure. He practices saying certain things in his head, works out a structure of it all, and hops back and forth between doing that and browsing the internet vaguely for the rest of his night.

The next morning he feels kind of terrible for no actual reason. It's not, actually, easy to push through it. It helps to remind himself he has a Project, though. Well, it does the opposite of help when it comes to his anxiety levels, but he just rehearses his planned story a bit in his head and that helps with that. Tugs him out of the bad state he started in, even if he keeps finding himself pulled back in that direction. 

He feels better over time, though. Being out of the apartment, having made it to classes today, having friends he's meeting up with at lunch. All of it helps. He kind of figures he won't actually end up delivering the whole speech about the Second Punic War but if he does he is prepared.