A Russian, a German, and a Grecian Demi-Goddess walk into a room

There was an idleness he was unused to in this place. Without lessons, without the barking commands and razor-sharp insinuations of his teachers...Illya felt as lost as he had on that street corner. Even with a belly full of simple, but filling food, warm and able to sleep without fear of interruption, this world was too strange to let him settle. However awful the things said and done to him in the cold walls of his school, it had become familiar. Discomfort and unhappiness the new normal.

He was less nervous in approaching Martin, less afraid the older boy would rebuff his company or turn on him for a foot placed wrong. For every time he had flinched in the expectation of the back of the boy's hand, there had been nothing but a sad twist of a smile. For every discovery of some need Illya had tried to hide until his stomach had growled audibly or his teeth clacked with cold, a hot meal or a push toward bed or an invitation to go put on his coat.

"Could we go out?" he asks, still choosing his words carefully although he hides his hopefulness less well than before.