Rake Rivers (rakenroll) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-01-15 01:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! backstory, - capitol, victor: 18th rake rivers, victor: 33rd beetee latier |
WHO: Rake Rivers & Beetee Latier
WHAT: Let's talk about sex, baby~
WHEN: 40th Games
WHERE: Lobby of the Training Center
STATUS: Complete log!
PROMPT: Love [Rake | Beetee]
Beetee wandered into the lobby of the Training Center looking down at the screen of his Capitol-issued handheld device, only half paying attention to where he was going. He'd honed his peripheral vision as a young child, wandering from room to room in his family's apartment with his nose buried in a book or his hands busy with whatever gizmo had caught his fancy. As an adult, he used those skills to walk while watching the Hunger Games in crisp high-definition. He wasn't a mentor, but it was almost a point of pride for him to keep abreast of the arena's events, even when District 3 had no chance of victory (Beetee would bet money on the girl from District 1 or, in a surprise twist, perhaps the boy from 10). He had almost reached the elevator when he noticed the sound of music from the other side of the lobby, where Rake Rivers sprawled on a loveseat, strumming a guitar and singing a song Beetee didn't recognize. And mother always told me be careful of who you love / And be careful of what you do 'cause the lie becomes the truth… Beetee passed his hand over his handheld screen, and the image went dark as he pocketed the device and walked over. "Is this a song from District 9?" he asked as he sat down in a chair across from Rake. Rake nodded, but didn’t put the guitar down until he’d finished the chorus: Billie Jean is not my lover / She’s just a girl who claims that I am the one / But the kid is not my son… “My old man used to sing it, back when I was a boy.” He dropped the instrument into his lap and flexed his fingers, aching from scampering over the frets. He’d always gripped the neck too hard, as if in strangulation, and old habits died hard. “Think he was trying to tell me something?” He gave the bespectacled victor a snarlish grin, wide enough to reveal a fresh gold cap on a bottom tooth. Beetee raised an eyebrow in response. "He could have been," he guessed. He supposed he could look up Rake's birth certificate, or even, perhaps, his genetic code. There were scientific methods of determining paternity, objective answers to everything. "But the song has a nice cadence to it, regardless of lyrical content." Absently, his fingers tapped out the rhythm on the armrest of his chair. Rake gave a breathy snort of amusement as he looked over the scrawny brainiac from Three, who supplied logical answers to rhetorical questions. It was the sort of thing that ought to have annoyed him, but Beetee’s sheer lack of pretension was a rare saving grace among victors. In Rake’s district, they called that “straight shootin’.” It was among the highest of accolades. “You hit puberty yet, kid?” he asked, seemingly out of nowhere, but reasonably sure Beetee wouldn’t take offense. Rake supposed he must’ve; he was much taller now, if not any manlier. “If you wanna avoid your own Billie Jean situation, I could recommend you my urologist.” "I assure you, it won't be a problem. I am largely not interested in the kinds of sexual activities that can lead to reproduction," Beetee said, shaking his head. The statement was made without shame or shyness; he'd discovered his orientation as a young teenager and promptly accepted it and moved on. It had never been important enough to him to warrant angst or insecurity, and it went without saying that Beetee wasn't likely ever to be coerced into unwanted sexual encounters. He wasn't the kind of alluring, desirable victor that sort of thing happened to, and it had been years since he was shiny and new. At twenty, he was gangly and awkward, still the youngest and the slightest of the male victors, but his voice, at least, had stopped cracking. “Suit yourself,” Rake grunted, though he still looked askance at Beetee as he picked his guitar back up and plucked an idle tune. Maybe the kid wasn’t the Capitol’s wet dream vision of sculpted, well-oiled perfection, but if he’d learned anything in all his years of rubbing shoulders (and other things) with these gluttonous, lustful weirdos, it was that there was a market for anything. Someone had even wanted Maizy — that wisp of a girl with an old hound’s face. Someday, he was sure, some greedy hands would come snatch him up by the balls, and the poor bastard wouldn’t know what hit him. Rake reminded himself that he didn’t care. He wasn’t the Patron Saint of Little Victors — hell, the boy wasn’t even from his district. Not his charge; not his problem. —Yet something niggled at him. “Whad’you mean,” he demanded, “that lead to reproduction? Langfield didn’t nail your ass, did he?” Rake glared at Beetee, with nearly as much heat as if he were talking to the dinosaur himself. Beetee returned the glare with a look of skepticism, not quite sure how to process Rake's reaction. While Beetee knew the man to be a polarizing figure, he couldn't muster up the same level of hate for Narses Langfield -- and it had little to do with the conversation at hand whether or not his former stylist had decided to take clothes off for a change. "Irrelevant," he said decisively. "Would it change anything if he had? It's all a matter of hormones and brain chemistry, isn't it?" “Because,” Rake drawled, in his slowest, gravest of growls, “you’re playin’ your fiddle with the Devil, boy.” He fixed Beetee with a grim look, and then slowly leaned back against the seat, satisfied by his utterly unambiguous explanation. That would scare some sense into the child. Beetee's eyebrows rose behind his glasses. He wasn't familiar with most idioms from the rural districts (what did swine do, exactly, when presented with pearls?), but this one struck him as particularly nonsensical. The Devil didn't exist, and, even if he did, did it matter if one engaged in intercourse with him? As far as Beetee was concerned, at this point in his life, sex was merely another biological function, determined by the delicate balance of human hormones. "You have no evidence to suggest that I have," he said lightly, tilting his head. While Beetee could appreciate logical hypotheses and intuition, he disdained wild guesses based on emotional responses, as Rake's was. He mirrored Rake's posture, sitting back in the chair, and resumed tapping the rhythm of the song on the arm rest. "People always told me, be careful of what you do," he sang softly, echoing the lyrics he'd heard Rake crooning before. His voice was nothing special, but he mimicked the pitch and tempo perfectly. The musical gesture appeared to mollify Rake somewhat; his heated gaze rolled off of Beetee’s face. His expression smoothed as he picked up the lick again, in time with the younger victor’s tempo. They completed the verse that way — “be careful who you love” — before Rake stopped again, eyeing the kid appraisingly. He’d known Beetee was a brain, but he hadn’t expected him to have such an ear. Beetee stopped when Rake did, matching his gaze with a questioning look of his own. The lyrics meant very little to him, someone who had never been in love and doubted he ever would. No doubt there were tributes who would die in the arena with more experience than Beetee. "If this year's male tribute is any indication, this song is not popular in District 10 either," he observed, seemingly out of the blue. Rake’s attention gravitated back towards the muted television screen, where the mooncalf in question gazed lustfully at his Amazonian mistress. “You could take a bath,” read the closed captioning. “I could keep lookout.” Rake laughed. “She’s gonna be the death of him,” he declared. “And he’ll have nobody but his old fool heart to blame.” He turned away from the screen, dropping a hand over the hollow of his own chest, as if reminded that it was there. “Never did had much use for my own,” he confessed. “And you…” His eyes narrowed to steely slits as they raked over the young victor before him. “God makes us the way we are for a reason, I guess.” "I don't believe in God. Evolution is what made us the way we are," Beetee said, sounding almost surprised that anyone could think otherwise. He stood up, eyes fixed on the television screen as he smoothed out the wrinkle in his trousers. The girl from District 1 was beautiful, and Beetee supposed that must have made her lies that much more believable to the poor District 10 boy. Would they have enough time in the arena for the lie to become the truth? It didn't seem possible, but then, Beetee didn't know how long it took to fall in love. He looked towards the elevator bay. That's where he'd been headed, before he got sidetracked by this musical diversion. "I should go back to my floor. Thanks for the song, Rake." |