[sylvanSpider]

Aren jumped hearing voices where he'd expected silence. For the most part, the apartment complex was quiet as the grave in the moments before the sun came up, and just after. He'd expected the rooftop to be void of activity, but he was wrong. There were others in the complex, it seemed, that were motivated.

He spun around on his heel to face the two before him. One taller man, one shorter, and they appeared to be brothers despite their difference in hair color. Serj had told him that in days before the Reckoning, their type would do well by avoiding those with lighter skin. He never understood why, but his brother said that back then? It was different. The skin you wore on the outside made everyone immediately think of who you were on the inside, and that those with darker skin had to be careful who they spoke to. That sense of unease Aren never felt, and didn't feel it now in front of the ginger man and his apparent younger brother.

Aren's hand immediately went up to scratch the back of his head. He never hated people, but he was always at least a little shy and seeing that the brothers came up here to do something Serj had pushed and pushed Aren to do with him, he couldn't help but feel a little bit guilty. “Uh...I wasn't expecting nobody neither, honestly. Do ya'll do this everyday?” Aren asked, noting that the clothes they wore were obviously for training and fitness purposes rather than casual purposes. He'd come up here, unmotivated, simply trying to escape it all and the last thing he wanted was to be in their way.

He watched as the younger brother worked on finishing his pull ups – he was apparently called “Tris” from what he could pick up – and put his hands in his pockets, ready to search for another place he could call a sanctuary. The rooftop, it seemed, wouldn't be ideal just given the fact that apparently at least two used it at the times he'd be wanting to. Surely there had to be another place in the city that he could call his own, someplace aside from that empty apartment with so many awful memories. So, he jammed his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat, “You're talkin' about getting' outside the city walls? Do you know how?” Aren tried to hide the eagerness in his voice and shifted his weight from one leg to the other, “Could you tell me how?”