BUCK TANNER (rides) wrote in colosseum, @ 2013-12-13 01:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 55th games, - arena, tribute: 55th buck tanner, tribute: 55th laurel lyndon |
WHO: Buck and Laurel
WHERE: Mountains!
WHAT: A FIGHT!
WHEN: Idk, today. Are we on Day 10? Yikes
STATUS: COMPLETED LOG
For being a hair’s breadth from death every moment, sometimes the Arena wasn’t so bad. His body had acclimated to the cold as much as it could. He had plenty to eat,he knew where to find firewood and how to make potable water. Laurel was alive, and doing really well. They were making good progress across the snow, to the mountains. They’d be on the other side soon, to whatever that held. But for now, there were still miles of rock and snow. That was all right. They were both strong, hardy, used to the outdoors. They weren’t weak. That was huge.
Walking was more fun when someone else was around, he noticed. It could be deathly boring, but with Laurel there, the miles felt like nothing at all. He was grateful for her. Without her, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep so much of himself. But she reminded him of girls back home. She swore like a sailor, she never admitted defeat, and she absolutely didn’t take bullshit. He’d have to separate from her, in the end. Every morning he wondered if today was possibly that day, but by every evening, he told himself they’d wait until there were more faces in the sky. Not yet.
Now, he took a break from walking and stooped down, grabbing a handful of snow on impulse. Maybe this was a deadly game where they’d all die in a few days. That didn’t stop the basest of boyish instincts. He shaped the snow into a ball and hung back a little, then fired it at the back of Laurel’s head. He ducked down, laughing rather evilly and hoping the move didn’t result in actual projectiles being chucked at his head.
Laurel was still in high spirits, keen to keep exploring the arena and to see what else they could make of it. She wasn’t altogether healthy, but she was better than she had been in days thanks to the powerful cream she’d been sent. She chatted happily with Buck as she went; stories from home and jokes to keep their spirits high. It was the first time she’d really thought of home, a slight twist of guilt when she told him about her best friend and remembered how she’d pretended that it was her boyfriend in the interviews.
Buck’s snowball was an unexpected challenge, and she looked over at him as he ducked. “HEY!” Laurel shouted, grinning widely. “That’s not fair!” The girl pulled her hat down over her blonde hair before dropping to her knees to form her own snowball. “Come and face me like a man!” Laurel called out, ready for this. It was fun, something she might have done with Hazel back at home. “Unless you don’t have the balls, Buck Tanner!” Laurel sing-song taunted him with a gleeful expression.
Well she hadn’t thrown a knife in his face, that was a pretty good start. He practically cackled and gathered more snow before taking her dare. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to do, seven.” He smiled, running backwards a few paces, out of her range. He was careful to look behind his shoulder, because this was still the Arena, and there were still dangers here. He shaped another snowball and threw it at her while running, which probably wasn’t the best strategy in the word. “Come on, you can try, though.” He taunted, standing still for a moment to give her a little chance.
Laurel bounded towards him, keen to win this fight. Snow was so different to weapons, even if the basic principle was the same. “You ain’t gonna win this!” Laurel told him, lunging forwards to try and pull him down onto the ground and claim the win for herself.
He wasn’t expecting the sudden jump at him, but he laughed, probably too loudly. On instinct, he grabbed her by the coat, dragging her down with him. This was just exactly like play-fighting with his friends at the Reaping, but colder. That felt like years ago. He hardly remembered their faces without purposely calling them back. But this was good, in the meantime. “Wanna bet?” He smirked, hovering over her face while he grasped around for more snow.
Laurel let out a shriek of laughter as she fell, trying to grab some snow from where she was on the ground and be quicker to throw it in his face than he was. She giggled madly as she scraped her gloved hand around - Buck had an unfair advantage with two working hands - and raised her good arm with a handful of snow ready to throw it at him. Or, perhaps, stuff it down his neck and teach him a good lesson for trying to start a snowball fight. Laurel didn’t like to back down from any kind of challenge.
But then she hesitated, arm still holding the snow, and rolled over so that she was a little way away from him. “You ain’t trying to do that tributes crushing on each other thing, are you?” Laurel asked him, the beginnings of a frown appearing on her face. “I ain’t here for that, even if the cameras love that crap.”
Buck tried to duck the snow, but it didn’t come. Instead, she rolled away and he tilted his head to see why. The reason made him wrinkle up his nose in what he hoped didn’t look like disgust. What the fuck. “No.” He responded immediately, and very firmly. “What the fuck, Laurel. I was just kidding.” It was everything just short of eww, and he sat on the snow, all the fight knocked out of him for the moment. “I don’t have a crush on you. Fuck.” he had to spell it out one more time. But he supposed it might look like that, when he thought about it again. The cameras loved that kind of crap. But that wasn’t what he was doing, and he wanted to be very clear about it. He looked up at the sky to make the cameras sure of it, too. “That was just playing around.” He told them. “I, Buck Tanner, do not want you to think I have a crush on Laurel Lyndon.” That done, he smirked over at her. “See?”
Laurel nodded, not entirely convinced until she realised just how disgusted he looked by the idea. And then, suddenly, Laurel started to laugh. “You ain’t my type, Buck Tanner, sorry,” she smiled. She’d told Flickerman about a boy back home, but it hadn’t been strictly true. But then, maybe it’d give her some kind of edge over Buck if she talked about it. Maybe, this time, telling the truth about her best friend and just how inseperable they were. Laurel had hardly dared to think about her in her time in the arena, but now that other tributes were gone and she wasn’t so sick it seemed like the time to talk about it. “I’ll understand if you’re devastated, I’m quite a catch,” Laurel told him proudly.
“Don’t get cocky, now.” He laughed, “I’ve got plenty opportunities at home, thanks. And anyway, I wouldn’t want to make your boyfriend jealous.” Yeah, he remembered her boyfriend from the interview. It struck him then that she hadn’t mentioned him since. A bit of natural curiosity, not so much a desire to catch her in a lie made him look over at her again, mischievous. “What’s his name,again?”
Laurel hesitated. She’d just been thinking about admitting to her earlier lies, but to say something about it to Buck suddenly seemed scary. She hadn’t mentioned the ‘boyfriend’ once, but then she hadn’t spoken about her family at all. “Ain’t got a boyfriend,” she admitted, “He’s a girl,” Laurel said quickly. “But-but she’s just my best friend, nothing more,” Laurel rushed to speak again, but she was already pink in the cheeks with embarrassment. “He ain’t real,” she affirmed. “I got flustered up on that stage and just went with it when Flickerman assumed it was a boyfriend I was talkin’ about.”
Suddenly the you ain’t my type, Buck Tanner made a hell of a lot more sense. “Uh-Huh.” he nodded slowly, looking like he was about to tease her about this latest revelation. But he decided he didn’t really want to. Let Laurel have her best friend, whatever it actually was. Buck shrugged, standing up, out of the snow. He smiled. “I mean, it’s just the interviews. You could’ve said you had a damn purple dog and they wouldn’t remember it right now. You have a fake boyfriend, that’s fine.” But his grin was of the most shit-eating version possible. This was funny.
Laurel glared at him, unwilling to make any further comment on the matter. “I ain’t got a purple dog either, but I can kick your ass at snowball fights with only one hand!” Laurel told him smartly, dropping to the ground and starting to awkwardly gather snow again. “Wipe that grin off your mug, I will!”
“Uh-Huh.” he said again, reaching down to grab more snow with his functioning two hands. He didn’t comment on that either, since that didn’t feel fair. “Still seems like a lot of talk.” Her snowball smacking him square in the face only made him laugh.