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The fee is paid to whoever generates the block that the transactions are in, and that's random.
Your friend could run a node that refunds the fee, but unless your friend can convince a lot of other people to run nodes that do the same thing you're almost certainly going to end up paying the fee.
Remember that all transactions (even payments from you to your friend) are broadcast across the payment network; they HAVE to be, because if they weren't you could spend the same coins twice without getting caught.