HA (dgaf) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-02-17 15:49:00 |
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When they both died in the Cornucopia was a good thing. Quick and dirty. No one to hope for, way more time for drinking and company he actually enjoyed. Except that near everyone else he cared for had a horse in this race still. That was pretty fucking shitty. Being ignored or pawned off or getting only third or fourth level of attention when he was giving all of it, yaaaaaaaay. So what was a cripplingly lonely, sadly-not-yet-terminally-fucked-up Victor to do but find pseudo-solace in the bizarre culture of the Capitol? The homance that was Falcona Perry and Electra Wax wasn’t the only example of such a thing he’d found this stay but it was -- by far -- his current favourite. The debut novel only published a scant nine months ago, but already there was three in a series that promised oh so sweetly to span eight total. Obviously, Haymitch had sped through all three epic length books in less than 36 hours, with no stop for boringities such as sleep or eating of meals that did not slick-slide down his throat. Equally obviously, the next thing to do was to conference call Electra and Falcona themselves. It was a thought that occurred to Haymitch at dark o’clock on day-ending-in-y, and was put into action not a minute afterwards, two sets of cell numbers tapped out with all the smooth ease Mayislee’s last fourteen breathes had lacked. That citrus sharp memory never stopped coming in handy, did it? He didn’t see which of them had picked up first. Of course not. Just jabbed the phone onto speaker and collapsed back onto his too fucking comfortable bed, arm thrown over his eyes and voice a little throaty from disuse. “Youuuu have been keeping secrets from me.” The phone had awaken Ampere from the three minutes of sleep she was allowing herself at that point. She knew Zap was getting better. Their gift had helped, and was continuing to help. But she had to keep an eye on him, anyway. That tiny prickle of hope deep in her stomach was coming back, as much as she tried to swallow it. She hadn’t felt this kind of hope since last year but here the hell it was. Insomnia and fast startle rates were just part of that. When her phone rang, she practically jumped out of her chair. She didn’t check to see who it was, just assumed the worst and pressed it up to her ear. It wasn’t Dim.’s harried tones, though. A quick check to her tablet established Zap’s relative safety. No, this was Haymitch’s scratching drawl. He didn’t sound very drunk, but not making any sense anyhow. “Probably.” She answered, collapsing onto a pillow. “What’d I do?” On the other hand, Peregrine voluntarily took the night shifts, staying awake at obscene hours and sleeping late into the afternoons. She had been running the stairwells, interspersing crunches or push-ups on the landings with pull-ups on the railings at the bottom floor, burning excess nervous energy and calories both while listening to the nighttime commentators on her headphones in case the attention was shifted to Four. The programming was interrupted with the chime of an incoming call, and Peregrine paused to fish the phone out of her leggings, swiping to answer before carrying on with the phone in hand. The voice on the other end of the line was distinctly too feminine to belong to Haymitch, though the display had indicated his name and this year's number. That was a first; in general the youngest outlying victor seemed to have nothing but contempt for the women of the capitol, which didn't seem to matter much as they generally considered him to be a scoundrel in return. "Haymitch?" she asked, uncertainly. Haymitch kept silent until both of them were on the line. It was manners of some sort to do that, and obviously Haymitch was a big big big fan of those being upheld. “I have called you both..” A pause, to shake out the twitch in his leg and rub his shoulders back into the bed. Why did lack of sleep make him feel so fucking…. fucking… whatever that word was that meant twitchy? “On this phone -- Ampere, Pere -- to talk about your very veryyyy gay affair, as revealed to the world by--” He paused for suspense, meagre as it was. Let no one say Haymitch Abernathy didn’t have a fine sense of dramatic timing. “Artemisia Loquasia, published in year 55 After Dark Days by Sunstar Limitless.” “Now be quiet, children and I shall begin.” Haymitch picked up the base unit of the phone and held it close to his mouth, grinning hard as he closed his eyes and began to recite with gusto, “All I need is one more chance, said Falcona, her voice husky, her breasts glorious.” Haymitch snickered, already having trouble not breaking narrative. “Electra shivered as the Victor from Four’s warmth breath tickled her ear and neck. I tried forgetting you… tried falling for someone respectable, but I - I just can’t. Electra shook her head bitterly, her special place -- “ Haymitch had to pause, his eyes watering with a laughter that made his ribs shake. Fuck, why hadn’t he linked Chaff in on this call? “Her special place -- tingling like the electricity for which her district was known for, at the other Victor’s dirty hot sexiness… Falcona, I-” "Are you reading fanfiction Haymitch?" Peregrine interrupted, doing her best to steady her breath now that the subject of the phone call was clear. "That is a dark, dark place. Tell me you're not beating off to this." “Haymitch. Eww.” She agreed, suddenly unable to do anything but revert back to being a twelve year old. Ampere wrinkled her nose at Pere’s suggestion. “You’re doing that, and you’ll no longer have a special place.” Haymitch snickered, and took a moment to dig around the bed for his cellphone. Taking a picture of him non-hard, not wanking, was a good idea. “Oh, Falcona, dirty, dirty hot Falcona Perry-with-a-y, Electra my dear Electra Wax, this is published fiction.” Ah, there was his cell. Two snaps of the camera function, and they were sent on their way to both their tablets: one of the front cover of ‘Catching Wax On My Body’, another a bug-eyed selfie taken on timer, both hands visible, fully clothed in exactly the same jeans-t-shirt-hodie combo he’d been wearing three days previous. The sick thing was, Ampere supposed she should be fairly honored that the Capitol still had her on their hot lesbian romance fiction radar. She wasn’t, of course. “Someone has an entirely too active imagination, then.” She decided almost primly upon seeing the photographic proof. She scrutinized the selfie for a minute before finding it satisfactory, for now. “And you look like shit, by the way.” "Who looks like shit?" Pere asked, climbing the last set of stairs to her district's floor and lowering her voice when she was inside, not wanting to disturb any of her fellow victors. "Who the hell publishes this crap? I mean, clearly the target reader audience are questionable at best." “Haymitch does.” She said simply, letting herself collapse on a sofa pillow. She didn’t talk to Peregrine very often, but really, she was one of the few decent-seeming Careers. She was only just tired enough to not care. “And I guess Sunstar Limitless does. I’ve never heard of them, so they’re probably not that great.” Peregrine slipped through the hall and into her bedroom. "When doesn't Haymitch look like shit?" she snorted, pulling the headphones from her phone and switching to speaker. "No offense Ampere, and I'm sorry to disappoint you Haymitch, but we're not really each others' type, I don't imagine, so I think Sunstar Limited's likely staffed by fucking morons." “Ladies, ladies--” Haymitch broke off into a yawn, more welcome than he’d let on. Insomnia could be a bitch worthy of the Capitol. “Their motto issss ‘Fucking morons for fucking morons’ for a reason.” And there it was, the snap of Pere’s sass and a loud beeping that indicated it was just him and Ampere on the line now. Haymitch smirked, and lurched across his bed to pick himself out a beer. “I knew she’d break first. Hashtag so sensitive.” Haymitch opened up his sleep-time drink with his knife and took a pull while still flat out on his stomach, “Sooo, not giving a shit this Games. How’s that going?” |