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Stan snickered as he recognized the box from across lunch tables where the nerds at school played and promptly snickered. “You wanna play the nerd math game with me?”
“It’s not a nerd math game.” Ford argued back. “It’s an intense and story driven role playing game with statistical analysis of battle strategies and-” He stopped at a snicker from Stan that had slipped out and scowled. “You know what- nevermind. Forget I asked.” He turned with the box in his arms and walked away.
“Wait!” Stan pushed down the smile from his face because in all honesty, he still thought it was funny. “No, come back!” He said, getting up when Ford didn’t even as much as pause.
Stan caught Ford by the shoulder and pulled him back. “Come on, Sixer.” A snicker slipped out. “Look, look, you haven’t even showed me how to play or nothing.”
Ford pulled against his grip, eventually breaking free. “You obviously don’t want to play it.” He said.
“I never said I didn’t want to play it!”
“You laughed at it!”
“Yeah because I don’t get why you asked me to play.” Stan said. “I would have failed math if we didn’t sit beside each other. I’m not going to be good at playing with math.”
Ford finally eased up a bit, his mood coming back just as easily as it’d gone, no harm done. “It’s a lot of fun.” He said, turning the box back around so Stan could see. “Well- it sounds like a lot of fun.”
“I always just hear them saying numbers.” Stan said.
“It’s all the stuff between the numbers though!”
“The numbers are the hard part to get past for me...” He responded with a shrug, then- “Well- I mean hey, how hard could it be, right?”
Ford smiled. “It’s not that hard at all! Once you make your character you’ve basically gotten through the majority of the math. I made mine during biology.”
Stan smiled back, willing to give it a shot. It couldn’t be that bad, right?
It was that bad.
Stan looked down at the paper overfilled with numbers that mixed around, a pencil in his hand. “Uh, so... my armor hit points... are...?”
“It’s Armor Class. It’s ten plus your Dexterity score then added on depending on the armor you’re wearing, leather is another one, leather studded is two-” Ford continued, explaining, and for maybe hundredth time Stan was lost. Again.
The two of them were in their bedroom, papers and dice scattered around where Ford sat as Stan laid over top of his own character sheet.
Stan hid his frown down at the paper with a hand at the top of his head so Ford couldn’t see his face. A peek up showed Ford with sets of numbers on a blank sheet of paper with scribbles of names on top of them - he was making the whole ‘dungeon.’
The next hour it didn’t get any better and Stan stumbled through trying to understand even just a little bit about it, getting more and more downtrodden until eventually he just couldn’t take feeling this stupid anymore.
After two hours of Ford setting up the game, however he did it, and Stan failing to understand how to play - they’d since been playing for almost another hour, with every step of the way Stan having to ask what something meant and how he was supposed to do it.
Stan let the frustration wrinkled paper fall to the floor, finally.
Ford looked at him questioningly. “Stan?”
“Look, Ford, I know you think this is really fun, but it’s just a bunch of math.” He said, with a shrug. “Look, I’m just more a punching things in real life kind of guy! Not a punching thing with numbers.”
“You didn’t even get out of the prison cell though...” Ford said.
“Ha, well if it was real I would have already gotten out of it.” Stan joked. “Look, it’s just a nerd game, that’s all there is to it.”
Ford frowned. “Right...”
Stan quickly went to cheer him up. “Hey, look, it’s not a bad thing. You can still play it by yourself.” He gestured at the sheets and sheets of paper that Ford had managed to produce. “Heck, look at everything you already did. You’re already set up. I’m not spending my time playing with math though.”
After a moment, Ford smiled back. “Yeah, well - it was worth a shot.” He started to gather up the papers then. “Hey, do you want to go to the beach?”
Stan instantly felt lighter, the oppressing weight of math off his shoulders for sure. “Yeah! Hell yeah, that sounds great right now. I’m tired of sitting in here.” He hesitated though. “Uh, wait- don’t you want to finish your game? I can do whatever while you play then we could go out.”
“No. I’ll play later.” He said, shutting the lid on the box and getting up, slipping his shoes on. “Come on! I’ll race you to the front door.”
“You’re on!” He grinned back, as Ford wasted no time in booking it. “Wh- Hey, no!” Stan ran over to his own shoes, putting them on as fast as he could. “Hey!”
“Looks like I’m winning!” Ford shouted smugly back.
Stan ran after Ford, quickly trying to push ahead before Ford could win with his head start.