[just some random interaction between two mercs I might turn into bigger characters. kinda stuck at the moment. for some reason I really like to write dialouge about nothing, but the problem you run into is that you have nothing to have them talk about...]
Zarja sat in one of the lawn chairs outside the garages. His jacket did its best to shelter him from the cold winds blowing across the concrete yard around the mercenary base. He regretted taking on the job as a lookout. The sun was slowly moving down towards the horizon behind the compact gray clouds. In a few months the Zone would be covered with snow, ending this year’s stalking season, and his friends would go back to their families. He could not say the same for himself.
Zarja was one of the few “year-rounders”, who stayed in the Zone over the winter months. He had no life outside the Zone and barely had one inside it. Maybe he would be invited to celebrate Novyj God with one of his friends, but afterwards he would go back and continue the search for artifacts in the Zone’s snowy forests.
The door opened. He looked over and in the doorframe stood his colleague, Maksym, with a pack of cigarettes in his hand. He nodded as a greeting and Zarja returned it. Maksym was a soft-faced Czech man who had very recently gone down the stalker path, and had not gained any nickname yet.
The newcomer leaned himself against the wall and fished out a cigarette from the box. He tried his best to light it, but the wind made the lighter’s flame flicker. With shaky hands, he cupped his hand around the tiny flame. When the cigarette finally lit, he took a long drag and breathed the smoke out with a soft sigh. Zarja had been clean from cigarettes for two years now, but he still remembered how that relieving burn in his throat could feel after a long day.
“What is you name?”, Maksym asked in his slightly broken Russian.
“Zarja, did you forget already?” he answered. Maksym shook his head.
“Real name, not…nickname.”
Zarja furrowed his eyebrows at the rookie's intrusive question.
“Don’t go around asking people that,” he reprimanded. “We have nicknames for a reason.” Maksym embarrassedly turned his head, looking out towards the field. A stalker’s real name was highly private information, it could easily be used against them. Zarja sunk down into his lawn chair. He personally actually didn't care too much about his name, since he never really left the Zone, but someone else might. Someone not as nice.
Zarja watched the dark clouds slowly moving towards their base. He tightened his crossed arms and shrugged his shoulders up to retain as much body heat as possible. His hands were numb from the cold, even though they were clenched under his arms.
“Paavo,” he sighed to break the silence, “My name is Paavo.”
“Hm. Thank you,” the other man answered with a cryptic smile, “My name is Marek.”
“I knew that,” Zarja lied.
The man, who was apparently named Marek, not Maksym, took a drag from his cigarette. The smoke rose up towards the rapidly darkening sky.
“Your name is…not..ehhm.” He frustratedly waved his hand in front of himself, seeming to be searching his mind for the right word.
“It’s not a common name, no,” Zarja cut off. Marek nodded with a smile.
“Yeah, it's a Finnish name. My family’s ancestors are from Finland,” he explained. “It's the Finnish version of Pavel.”