Lora's Birthday Prompts Part 1 of ?

[lorata]

In retrospect, posting a prompt meme immediately before my vacation was not the BEST timing, but oh well! I'll post more later. For now, enjoy part 1!

randomfacter prompted "Calli & Nero friendship moment"
- NOTE: I uh, I did that, but there is trauma in it


Nero’s still not sure this is his scene.

Actually, no, he’s pretty damn sure this ain’t his scene, but Calli was so enthusiastic about taking him out, no mentor, for the first time, and he’s never seen her this excited about anything that wasn’t cats or her knife collection. Or her subscription to Leather Monthly. Or - you know what, maybe Nero has seen Callista excited about a lot of stuff, but she wanted to take him out, and it was either a place in Careertown or Cats and Knives and Leather Fetish Club that he’s pretty sure does exist somewhere in the Capitol, so here they are.

It’s not a bad place, but when Adessa takes him out they go to jazz clubs where the music is low enough for intellectual conversation in quiet booths and no one would dare interrupt you unless invited. Nero never really thought about it until Calli brings him to (“No offence to your esteemed mentor, but honestly”) a normal club, which involves a lot of pulsing light and music that thumps in his chest bones and a dance floor where Nero takes up about four people’s worth of square footage.

“And you come here?” Nero asks. He has to bend and put his mouth close to Calli’s ear for her to hear him. “On purpose?”

“No, this is all an elaborate prank,” Callista says smoothly. “I hate it here. I only brought you to be cruel.” Nero glares at her, and she grins, showing her straight, white teeth. Except they glow in the weird lighting, which is - mildly terrifying. “This is fun, have fun! You shouldn’t only do things your mentor does. Nobody wants to be a sixty-year-old eighteen-year-old.”

Adessa is, like, maybe thirty-five, which is old but not that old. She looks pretty good to Nero, but maybe that’s how the world works when you look like Callista. He doesn’t bother to correct her. “I don’t mind the jazz.”

She waves her hand at him as though he’d held a dirty diaper in her face. “Listen to this man! Eighteen years old, doesn’t mind the jazz. You would be staying home to drink wine and embroider without my intervention.”

For the past five minutes Nero has been trying to flag down the bartender, as Callista could do it in seconds but she says the attempt is part of the experience. He tries again but the guy goes right past to a girl at the end of the bar. “Cal. Wine and embroidery was with you two nights ago. You’re just shitting me now.”

“Yes, but that was with me, darling, there’s a difference.”

“I think you’re making this up as - okay, fuck this.”

Fed up, Nero catches the bartender by the wrist on his way past. The man scowls, starts to wave for security, but Nero only looks down at his bare wrist and back up again and waits for the guy to do the same. It takes him a second to get it, but when he does he makes an ‘oh’ face and rushes off.

“I,” Nero says, “feel like an enormous douche.”

“Many people died so you could be that douche,” Callista said, cheerful and entirely unapologetic. “And you wouldn’t unbutton your shirt. We must use the advantages we have.”

At least he’s not a douche who has to pay for drinks. And at least they’re still in Two, so even in a club that’s too loud and too crowded, the drinks don’t glow in the dark or foam or taste like icing. Nero still isn’t used to alcohol, but here, at least, he’s less likely to get something sweet and sparkling that lands him on his ass. He let Callista order for him, and whatever he has smells faintly of smoke. Hers is a wine deep and thick enough to look like she’s sipping blood.

“Are you ever off-duty?” Nero asks her. “I mean, c’mon.”

“Branding, dear,” Callista says. “This one’s easy, I don’t mind. I can come out here on my own time, in my own clothes, with my own people,” she nudges him with her foot, “but a simple drink choice reminds them exactly who I am.”

“Who they think you are.”

One shoulder shrug, effortless. “Is there a difference? Does it really matter?”

He lets out a huff of breath and shakes his head. “Being you sounds exhausting.”

Callista fixes him with a sharp stare that Nero feels right to the base of his spine. “It will be you soon enough, but not yet.” The intensity switches off, and she pats him on the shoulder. “No, not yet.”

Most days he and Callista feel exactly the same age. And sometimes, always just for a few minutes at a time, she feels ten years older.

This might be about pushing Nero out of his comfort zone and getting him to do things his mentor wouldn’t, but Callista knows better than to drag him to the dance floor. Adessa’s been teaching him ballroom and he’s pretty sure that doesn’t translate to … whatever’s going on here. Put a knife to his throat and tell him to gyrate and Nero will do it, he’s lived through worse, but yeesh. They don’t try to talk much, not at this volume, but people-watching is always fascinating when Callista does it with the air of a hawk scenting prey.

“You are not enjoying this,” Callista says finally. She has leaned over into his space, flushed from the wine and the lights and the people, and she’s so beautiful and so not interested.

Nero resolutely looks up at the ceiling. “I’m not not enjoying. I like that we’re out. It’s just … loud, and a lot of people.”

Callista’s hand squeezes his elbow, a warm, brief press of solidarity, and then it’s gone. “Don’t worry, we don’t need -“

A couple appears in front of them, practically out of nowhere, and Nero feels Callista’s full-body sigh even if he can’t hear it through the bass-pumping. “Hi,” the woman says, and wow, they do build them brave here. “Sorry, I know this is probably weird, but we were wondering if you’d like -“

Branding, Nero thinks as Callista turns on her smile. “Oh, my dears. Any other night I’d be honoured, but today I have other plans.”

The man’s forehead wrinkles, the face of someone trying to come up with a better argument, and oh no. Not the fuck today, thank you very much. Nero reaches out and covers the guy’s entire head with his palm.

The man goes very still. The woman freezes, like she only just now figured out who Callista’s companion is, and is finally remembering what he’s famous for. Branding, his brain adds again, like a jackass.

“Like I said,” Callista continues, smooth as silk. “Flattered, but not tonight. Come, darling.”

Funny how easy it is to follow without speaking. How the words vanish, throat closing over as soon as he puts that mask on. As soon as they’re outside Callista takes him by the arm, leads him through a series of side streets until they reach a small park, illuminated by streetlights. She bends, unlaces his shoes in swift, efficient movements.

“Lift,” she says, tapping his ankles. He does, bafflement cutting through the haze for the first time, and she slips off both their shoes and socks. “In.”

His tongue feels thick, almost sticky, but the words do come. “It’s a city park. I don’t think we’re supposed to walk in it.”

Callista clasps him at the forearms, pinning him with her gaze. “Nero,” she says, terrifyingly gentle before her voice turns back to ice chips. “I do not give a single, flagrant fuck.”

They wade into the pond, absolutely ridiculous, and the cool water lapping against his calves after weeks in an Arena full of rocks and broken concrete knocks him back. “You’re here,” Callista says, fingers at his elbow, impossibly gentle. “Feel the water. Smell the grass. Look up at the sky. You’re here.”

“I’m here,” he repeats. “I know.”

“That was my fault,” Callista says. “I wasn’t being careful. All that talk of branding and off-duty. You shouldn’t have gone back there, even for a minute. I’ll be more careful.”

The thought of another person constantly living under pressure, waiting for him to break or crack or have a meltdown, is suddenly exhausting. Especially Callista, who’s barely older than he is. “Nah, Calli. That’s not your job.”

“I won’t pretend to be your mentor, or even a good person. But I can try not to make things worse.” She smiles at him, and this time she’s not the woman at the bar, poised and vicious, she’s tired and keeping on despite it all. “We owe each other that much, I think.”

Nero exhales. He’s pretty sure there’s a fish trying to bite his toes. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

“Good.” She squeezes his arm. “Now let’s see if we can find you somewhere better. I would murder an infant for some cheese fries.”

This time, Nero laughs.

diamondglimmeri asked for Callista with Victor Creed
- NOTE: no warnings on this one!


A few months out, Creed can actually jog around the Village without needing to stop to catch his breath, and his physiotherapist says he’s doing really well gaining back his pre-Games weight. Creed’s life is divided into appointments, physiotherapy and regular therapy and the doctor for his medication, but even that’s only every couple of weeks. In between there’s so much time. At first he didn’t notice, slipping in and out of medication hazes long enough to call for Alec, but now the world is sharper.

There are one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes in a day, and Creed feels every single one of them stretching out in endless agony.

One day Callista returns and tosses a thick pad of white paper and a long, wooden box that rattles when he catches it. Creed slides open the top hatch to find several dozen coloured pencils in various shades. “Are we going to a Peacehome? That would be fun! My dad said Emory and Devon used to go with Brutus a lot when we were kids…”

“No.” Callista waves her hand. “Maybe later. These are for you.”

On the one hand, Creed is alive when he should be dead (he has nightmares almost every night, still, he was the Angel of Death and he should have died, it still feels like he cheated the universe to survive) and his mentor is the one to thank for that. On the other … coloured pencils. “Is this because my therapist said something about giving me back my teenage years,” he says, dubious. “Wouldn’t that mean dating, or …” he struggles to think of something teenagers would do, “setting things on fire? Not colouring?”

“Hm.” Callista tilts her head that way she does and blinks her eyes slowly like a cat, the one that means ‘I love you’ but also, ‘you are being foolish’. “And your childhood, very normal, yes? Little Creed, seven years old, spent much time drawing pictures and playing silly games?”

He played many games, Creed wants to say, he played Arena and Dark Days and Rebels all the time, him and Alec and Selene the three of them, but with Callista watching him the question of whether those were normal feels like less of a sure bet. He definitely didn’t spend a lot of time drawing cute pictures for the refrigerator. Every so often Selene got inspired, but she tended to lose steam halfway through and order them outside.

“Okay,” he says. He tries not to sound dubious. Mentor above all, and all that. “I will … draw you a picture?”

Callista shakes her head. “Not me. Not for anyone. Just … draw. Service is an act with a time and place, not a state of being. Take your colours to the lake and exist.”

What, Creed thinks, the fuck. But he’s not about to disobey an order.

Alec joins him an hour later, a vaguely shell-shocked look slapped across his face like someone rearranged the alphabet in front of him the way he always does after a therapy session. “Callista said you’re … colouring?”

“I am drawing a turtle,” Creed says, serene. Incredibly serene, which is ridiculous, but that’s what he gets for questioning. He holds up the paper with an optimistic collection of greenish blobs. “Do you want to try?”

“Sure, why not.” Alec accepts a spare piece of paper and the box of pencils. “Your turtle looks drunk.”

“That’s how turtles look when they’re telling you to fuck yourself.”

“I see, I see.” Alec jostles Creed’s shoulder as he settles into place. Creed, humming, shifts to lean his head on his brother’s knee.

Miss May & blessyour_heart prompted Callista and Dexter
- NOTE: okay listen. I know the prompt said "bloodthirsty and comedic" and I promise I CAN read, but this is what happened instead. Warnings for tribute death, gore & torture, and mentions of the Capitol sex trade (not onscreen)


Dexter’s console flickered in warning before the earthquake struck; the handful of others who warranted advanced notice also glanced down, while others dozed in their chairs or argued with sponsors over their headsets. Later Dexter would wonder why send the alert at all; none of them could do anything about it.

Then again, it all happened so fast. By the time the others realized, it was all over. At least Dexter got to watch. Given that it’s the only thing a mentor can ever do, he was glad for that. But still. Fucking - shit.

First, the ground shook, knocking trees, sleeping tributes and piles of supplies sideways. In a heartbeat the Career pack on watch duty scrambled to their feet, eyeing the ground for fissues like the ones who’d killed their compatriots the year before. “Again?” groused one of the boys from Two, dragging a hand down his face and slapping the residual sleep away. “You’d think people would get bored of the same thing.”

“Two boy didn’t die last time,” said Dexter’s girl. “That’s novelty enough.” He bared his teeth at her but she only grinned, sharp-toothed and feral. Those two had not spent the last four days cuddling in sleeping bags or making out under the Arena stars, and Dexter’s chest ached for her but she could bring it home, she could.

“Shut up,” hissed Four girl, uptight version. The one with the better personality choked to death by a stream on the first day, betrayed by her precious water. “Can’t you hear it?”

Dexter held his breath, jammed his hands over the ear cups on his headphones to cut out the ambient sounds of the control room, because the mountain breathed.

It could have been thunder, at first, low and rumbling, in and out like a giant’s snore. Then a plume of cloud rose from that beautiful, picturesque mountaintop, thick and white and climbing. “What the fuck is that,” breathed Two girl, shading her eyes in the dim light of early morning. Drone cameras on the broadcast channel swirled in closer, picking up the rising smoke around the belching summit. And then - a crack at the dome, an odd sagging from underneath.

The mountain collapsed in sickening slow motion.

“Holy shit!” The pack jumped back in reflex as the mountain face slid downward, building up an alarming trail of dust and smoke. Two boy let out a low whistle. “See, that’s why I said we shouldn’t camp out at the base. Nobody likes a rockslide.” At his insistence they’d picked a spot in the trees about ten kilometres out.

“Yes, you’re a genius,” Four girl shot back, dripping with sarcasm, but this time it was Dexter’s girl who cut them off.

“Shut up,” she said, not looking at either of them. She’d turned to face the mountain, expression fixed in stone. “If it’s a landslide, shouldn’t it be … stopping?”

The cloud was not stopping. It wasn’t even slowing down. No longer a single column of white, the mass of ash and dust had thickened into a rising wall that picked up speed and volume as it tore down the mountainside, billowing forward with streaks of jagged lightning cutting through the dark.

A pause for one shared breath, two, three, ragged against the oncoming roar. Dexter’s fingernail sliced off the edge of his thumb, slipping in the hanging cuticle. “Run,” said Two boy, unnecessary, but the word provided the spell they needed to break the pack’s paralysis.

Without another word, the pack splintered in opposite directions. They ran, brilliant, trained athletes in their prime, dodging obstacles and clambering up the sides of trails, skewing off the path in the hopes that it might save them.

Two boy found an outcropping of rock, ducked behind it and curled into a ball to wait out the deadly wave. But this was no avalanche, and his makeshift shelter was buried under 150 feet of molten rock and mud. The girl tore off ahead of the others, but with the apocalypse bearing down on her she stopped, clenched her fists, head down. Then she spun, boots skidding on gravel, dug in her heels, threw back her head and screamed in challenge until the end.

One boy spewed a ragged stream of profanity even as his breath shortened into gasps. Four girl tripped, pushed herself to her feet, hand pressed to her heaving ribs, eyes wide and mouth in a grim line as she studied the approaching cloud, before stumbling off again.

Dexter’s girl kept running and never stopped, never looked back, not once.

In a matter of seconds - seconds - the mountain consumed them all.

Dexter’s console powered down with a low hum, a single message flashing across the screen: THANKS FOR PLAYING!

This was not Dexter’s first loss. He was not stupid, or arrogant - and District 1 is certainly not naive - to think it would be his last. But this marked the first that felt so stupid, so pointless.

Onscreen the rolling ash cloud swept on, moving impossibly, unbelievably fast, outrunning even the district trains. By now Death Command was a buzz of shouts and screams; mentor screens alight with tributes drowning, crushed by rocks, swept away in a tidal wave of mud.

The hunting pack, on the far side of the meadow, stared up at the mountain in horrified awe as arcs of lightning and fire shot from its surface.

“Well,” said their surviving girl, “that makes things easier.”

On the other side of the woods, the boy from Twelve watched through narrowed eyes, then turned and spat onto the grass.

Dexter’s breath stuck in his chest. Behind him, a few of those who just lost everyone in play made plans for dinner. Footsteps approached Dexter’s chair, paused, kept moving.

“You.” He didn’t bother to look. “Pretty one. Do you want to maim something?”

Now he glanced over. One of the women from Two, dark and stunning and dangerous, her screen dark the same as his. She had blood-red nails filed into points and a calm expression, almost serene, except for a glint in her eyes that called to Dexter through a lurch in his gut.

Their districts murder each other every single year. This woman, effortlessly beautiful even with ink-smudges on her palm and dark shadows beneath her eyes, would never know the touch of a hand she can’t refuse.

His screen had not come back online. The scoreboard on the far wall mark District 1’s running tally at 2:2.

Dexter’s breath, unstuck all at once, left him in a rush. “Fuck yes.”

She took him out through one of the back doors, past an Avox who nodded and, of course, said nothing. Callista (Dexter finally remembered) pressed something into his hand as they slipped by.

“Do I want to know?” he asked in an undertone once they reached the alley.

“Drugs,” Callista said, so matter of fact that Dexter couldn’t help a bark of laughter. It felt like a betrayal but at the same time, a relief. “One of mine. Guaranteed clean, nice and floating with a gentle comedown. Capitol mixes are hard and ugly. Most of them don’t need to work the next day.”

You didn’t need to tell Dexter, but that was not a conversation for a Two. The idea that one of them apparently dealt bespoke happy drugs to Avoxes on the side in exchange for favours felt incredulous enough, he was not about to ask if she can cut him in.

“All of this for nothing.” Callista tipped her head back, face lit by the scattershot glow of the all-night fireworks. “Double the tributes, and for what? To take out half in a single shot? Ridiculous. Amateurs. We being them glory every year and they crush it underfoot. Wasting potential like poetry for shit-paper.”

Dexter laughed again, raw and scraping. God, Twos, never change. “So you could do better as a Gamemaker, that’s what I’m hearing?”

She slitted her eyes at him. “Sacrifice is sacrifice no matter what. Death is death. But this? We give them our children, willingly or not. It should mean something. Their lives should not be wasted.”

For the first time he can remember, Dexter blinked first. He looked away, pressure in his chest. “Not arguing with that.”

The Capitol, like any other, was a city, even with the glitz and glamour of the centre-ville. Once they left the downtown core with the Games complex, the casinos and hotels and twenty-four hour restaurants, blinding lights and promise of nonstop fun fun fun, the Capitol got a little dimmer, a little dingier, and Dexter’s instincts began to prickle.

“It doesn’t take long,” Callista said. She’d transformed into Career mode now, all angles and alert, and Dexter felt himself come alive even being next to her. He’d forgotten what hunting felt like. “This time of night, someone’s always around.”

“And you, what, hope they’re drunk enough to try something, so you know they deserve it?”

He didn’t know why he said it, but he’d never forget the look Callista shot him, part withering, part pity, before casting her gaze back out over the street. “Look around you. Everyone here deserves it.”

Thrill danced across his spine, or maybe it was the morning breeze. “And here I thought you were loyal.”

This time she rounded on him, eyes blazing. “I am loyal. I have more loyalty to this country in one thimbleful of blood than every fool drinking themselves stupid back there. So does each of those children lost, and so, I should think, do you.”

Loyalty would not be how Dexter put it, loyalty was for Twos and their stupid complex, loyalty was - let’s be frank - for suckers. But something pushed Dexter out of bed each morning, something got him into that mentor chair day after day, and something kept him from sticking a syringe into his arm and pushing the plunger all the way down when gritted-teeth stubbornness just wouldn’t cut it anymore.

Was it loyalty? Probably not, he was too damn pragmatic for that. But it sure wasn’t a love of fucking entertainment, either.

“I think I hear something,” he said instead.

Oh, he’d missed the smell of blood. He’d hated it too, the way it crept into his dreams and filled his nostrils, the way the Arena lingered over his shoulder in all the worst ways. But standing over some Capitol asshole, blubbering on the ground while the blood pooled out onto the concrete, a dagger in his hands - fuck, if he didn’t feel seventeen again in all the ways that mattered.

“I don’t need your money,” Callista was saying in a voice of exaggerated patience. “I have my own. What I really want is for you to hurt enough for both of us.” She waved to Dexter. “You remember how to keep them alive, don’t you, darling?”

He laughed. “Don’t worry, we can be here as long as you want to.”

Some time later, Callista’s fingers circled his wrist. “We can’t kill him,” she said, bringing him back from a haze as floating and gentle as the drugs she gave the Avox. “I made a promise, and security tends to look the other way for my little escapades but only so far as I colour within the lines. If you want more we can find someone else.”

Blood coated Dexter’s arms to the elbows, splattered his chest and across his forehead. Callista, meanwhile, could go for brunch at a fancy restaurant, save for a delicate spray of arterial blood across her cheek. “No,” he said, surprised to find he meant it. “I’m good.”

“Good.” She smiled, bright and savage, and she cocked her head and gave him a slow once-over. “Now I do find that sometimes, with the bloodlust sated, other appetites rise to the surface …”

Now that was absurd. Their girls were dead, buried under ash and mud, impossible for the hovercrafts to retrieve until the Games were finished. He and Callista had nearly killed a man together in broad daylight. And yet Callista had a smile that shot warmth down to his toes, and curves that made his mouth water, and they had nearly killed a man together in broad daylight.

But she was Two, untouchable, and Dexter did not have that luxury. “Not really,” he said, stomach twisting. He kept his voice light even as his fingers tightened on the dagger. “Thanks, though.”

Callista nodded, brisk and businesslike, as though he’d turned down an alliance. “Of course. Now let’s get back before someone -“

He could say no. Here, with her, in an alley with a man bleeding out at his feet, Dexter could say no.

He crashed into her, dagger pressed flat to her collarbone, and kissed her so hard he tasted blood. Callista laughed into his mouth, a pleased, if startled, sound, and kissed him back. “I see how it is,” she murmured. “My safe word is Octavius.”

Dexter reared back. “Your what is who?”

Callista paused, fingers tracing patterns on his hip, and he couldn’t tell if he’d disappointed her, made her unexpectedly sad, or both. “Hm,” she said finally, as though that explained everything. “Come home with me. There is much to learn.”

He almost said no again, just because he could, but he had a knife to her throat and she still hadn’t flinched, and she’d brought him out to hunt and her hand was close, so close, and if he said no she would step back and lead him home and that would be it. She wouldn’t pull his hair and call him a tease and demand he finish what he started. The freedom of it, mixed with the scent of blood, made him giddy.

His girl was dead. He was alive. And he’d made some asshole bleed for both.

“Yeah, okay,” Dexter said. Callista showed her canines when she grinned.

kawuli prompted Alec getting in a fight about Jake
- NOTE: poor Alec! warnings for ableism, but the guy does get punched for it


Alec has the sneaking suspicion Jake is doing it on purpose. “You aren’t even going to play,” he says, accusing, Which is ridiculous, because Jake worked in a factory and went to factory bars and Alec knows those guys play darts, there is no way Jake has never played. No way he isn’t even good at it, but every time they go to the bar he plunks himself down on a seat and turns Alec loose on the nearest group of people having a pick-up game in his eye-line.

“Eh,” Jake says, leaning back with exaggerated casualness that makes all of Alec’s childhood developmental alarms blare. “I have more evenings off than you, I can play anytime. You have fun.”

‘Fun’ is a weird word for what happens any time Alec gets sucked into pointless games of skill, but sure, why not. Alec narrows his eyes, Jake slides into a slow smile, and one day, one day Alec will have friends who are not completely incorrigible but apparently it is not this day. He snorts, curls two fingers around the neck of his beer, bends to kiss Jake (Jake winds his fingers into Alec’s hair and that takes a second - okay, this part is nice) and heads off to the group at the darts table.

One of the women in the group is a regular, and she snickers as he approaches. “Look who’s back. I thought you said you were done.”

Alec rolls his shoulders, loosening his posture. “Can’t stay away,” he says. There’s a leather pouch on the table that means they have the throwing knives ready for unsuspecting marks - darts in ex-Career town rarely stays darts. They tried it on him, of course; everyone knows by looking at Alec that the Program would have put him on swords and spears and never wasted him on knife throwing. Too bad for them Selene made him practice with her so she could keep up with Petra. That day was the first time Alec ever actually hustled anyone on purpose. Selene laughed herself sick when he finally broke down and told her.

(Jake, meanwhile, pulled him up against the wall outside and kissed him breathless. Alec didn’t pretend to understand, but he wasn’t stupid enough to complain.)

Another of the regular guys is here too, and Alec never bothers to remember his name but boy, is he annoying. If Creed were here, he and Alec could have a whole conversation in eyebrows and rolled eyes behind his back. After ten-plus years, the thought gives Alec a sense of quiet fondness (mostly) rather than the old, hollow punch to the gut it used to, but that doesn’t make dealing with I-made-the-final-six-how-far-did-you-get any less tedious.

(Just. They lost the war, man. Caring about that shit in a world where hundreds are buried beneath the mountains is flat-out embarrassing, at best. Let it go.)

But whatever. Jake likes the drinks and thinks Alec should socialize and it’s not the worst, it’s just … ugh. Alec does toss an exasperated look over his shoulder. Jake’s mouth twitches, and he winks at him over the top of his beer.

“Of course he couldn’t stay away.” What’s his name grins at him, toothy and sharp. He’s good looking, because of course he is, everyone who makes it through the Program can hold the cameras’ attention somehow, and yet when he speaks Alec’s brain plays an extended fart noise. That, he thinks, is also the ghost of Creed, perennially a teenager. “Where else is he going to find someone who can match him?”

In reality, everything carries on as normal, glasses clinking and the buzz of conversation and spikes of laughter, but in Alec’s head the bar goes quiet, heads turning. What does happen is one of the others leans in and hisses, “Dude! His boyfriend’s disabled.”

Everything still feels very far away. Alec looks out over the bar and not at what’s his name as he says, “You wanna try that again?”

“I’m not being a dick,” the guy says, amazingly, and this is what happens when you spend eleven years telling people they’re the most specialest of boys for running the fastest and hitting the hardest and swinging the biggest swords. Sometimes, you get dickheads. “I’m just saying, when you’re talking competition, Seniors trump Juniors, Residential trumps Transition, ex-Career trumps civilian, so -“ Thankfully he doesn’t finish his sentence, he just waves a hand. At least his friends look embarrassed, all of them doing the awkward floor shuffle or pretending there’s something really interesting on the ceiling. “You want a real fight, you come here.”

“Apparently not,” Alec says, and decks him in the throat.

“Excessive force,” drawls one of the others, and the rest of them break out into scattered laughter even as they help him up and drag him off. “Shit, dude, you okay?”

He’ll be fine, Alec almost says, before it sinks in the question was directed at him. “Oh. Yeah, I’m good. I’m gonna go, though.”

“Yeah, no worries. Next time.” To cement the utterly bizarre experience of ex-Career town, Alec punched out his friend and now he gets a fist bump before the bunch of them peel off. Meanwhile the bartender hasn’t even looked up.

He forgets his beer on the table, but he really doesn’t care.

Jake has already gathered up his jacket. “You gonna tell me what that’s about?”

The last thing he needs is for some idiot’s thoughtless comment to make its way back to Jake and ruin his night. “Nope.” Alec hooks an arm around his waist and tugs him in, possessive in spite of himself. “We’re good.”

“Uh huh.” Jake drums his fingers against Alec’s hip. He’s quiet until they’re outside, and Alec thinks he’s gotten away with it when Jake says, “So you defended my honour back there, huh?”

Alec blows out his breath. “Shit! No, I know you can handle yourself, I wasn’t trying to be all -“ Creedy, his brain supplies, but while Jake knows about his dead brother, he wouldn’t get the joke or why it’s funny, even through the layers of burned-out grief. You really did have to be there.

Jake stops, places his hand on Alec’s chest. “Didn’t say I hated it. New rule, white-knighting is fine when it’s hot.”

Alec splutters out a laugh, but Jake’s eyes are dark even with the grin and something sparks deep in his gut. “Oh, is that the rule now?”

“Yep.” Jake steps in close. “And in case you’re still not with me, that was really hot.”

“I’ll try to keep up,” Alec says. He draws them into a corner, out of reach of the street lamp, and pulls Jake in for a kiss.

twixt_time asked for Devon being clever and analiza_beta wanted bb Devon in the Centre


Gareth is the last man standing but Devon gets the apple, and man oh man that makes Gareth so mad. “He was out!” he shouts, face puffing red. “He got out so many times! Nobody ever even hit me once!”

Devon stands with his hands pressed to his sides, waiting for it to stop. Gareth must be an only child. Nobody with lots of siblings would ever think whining at a grownup like that would actually work. Mama says her ears don’t work and she can’t hear voices if they go up too high. They gotta repeat themselves talking normal.

“Sure,” the trainer says, and guess her ears work fine but it doesn’t sound like she’s gonna give Gareth what he wants anyhow. “But it’s not always about being the last one. Why do you think we gave Devon an apple this time?”

“Because you like him better,” Gareth says immediately, and oh boy. “He always gets whatever he wants.”

Oh, Devon thinks, switching his theory. Oldest child. Younger brother or sister.

“Hm.” Whenever a grownup says that, you know you’re wrong, but Gareth hasn’t figured that out yet. “Devon, what do you think?”

Devon does not care about Gareth. He doesn’t hate Gareth or anything, he really doesn’t care about him and is happy to think about him as little as possible. But apparently the trainers want him to. Maybe that’s a part of being here: paying attention to other people even when you don’t have to. “It’s a team game,” he says. “Gareth thinks he won because he’s the only one left but you didn’t say Arena rules. We just had to get the other people out.”

Gareth spins on him, hands on hips. “If everyone is throwing balls at you guys, that makes it easier for me to throw balls at them. That’s how strategy works!”

“You hogged all the balls and didn’t let anybody else throw,” Devon says, dogged. “We would have had to fight you to get any. That’s divide and conquer. That’s bad strategy.”

“You said Devon kept getting out,” says the trainer. “Do you know why?”

Gareth scowls. “Because he’s slow?” But he looks more sulky than angry. They’re trying to teach a lesson here, and even Gareth knows when to listen - eventually.

She tilts her head at Devon, and he almost doesn’t want to say except that’s stupid. It’s a basic rule in dodgeball, not government plans. Even if he was the only one to realize it today, somebody else would have figured it out tomorrow. “It’s easier to get people out from jail,” he says. “I traded, so it wasn’t cheating.” In normal rules, he’d have to leave and go back to the front any time he hit the opposing team; if one of his teammates was in jail with him, he’d let them return to the game instead. “I thought we could win if I kept getting people out from jail.”

“You had 13 outs,” the trainer tells Gareth. “That’s good! Devon got 17. And he sent one of your team back into play every time.”

Gareth’s going purple again, and the game was frustrating but figuring out how to make it work had been fun, like a puzzle, and Devon really doesn’t want to end it on a tantrum. “Here,” he says. “You got the Victor shot, you can have my apple. I’ll get another one later.”

The trainer raises her eyebrows at him when he sidles over. “You don’t get another one for giving yours away. He’ll have to learn on his own.”

“I know,” Devon says. “I don’t want another one. I want to know what I can do to get a mango.”

Her eyebrows rise higher. “Oh? A whole mango?”

“Or a piece of one. Ilani said it was too slimy so she let me have hers and it was really good. I want to bring one home for my sister.” Devon turns on the face, which is what his parents call it when he makes his eyes real big. “Do I need to run real fast? Climb the ropes to the top again? Punch somebody big and mean?”

She’s trying not to laugh, and that means Devon’s won, even if she won’t admit it. “Let me think about it. For now, go help Sena set up the relay cones.”

Mango mango mango, slimy yummy mango! Devon sings to himself as he dashes across the room. Gareth glares at him and takes a big, crunchy bite of the apple, but Devon doesn’t even notice.

tehrupika asked for midsummer shenanigans at the lake
- NOTE: so the EXACT SAME THING happened as the last time someone asked for summer shenanigans, which is my brain went "well that's not a happy time" and it wasn't until after I'd finished that I went "oh I could have written postwar". TOO LATE! There are like ... hints? of shenanigans? but also, two new kids are dead.


Cicadas singing in the trees. Frogs calling to each other across the lake. The distant splash of a turtle leaping off its rock into the water. And the incessant click-click of Misha flipping her lighter back and forth.

Devon, only a man with the patience of a thousand saints, no more, does not reach over and toss the cursed thing into the lake, but only just. “Mish,” he says, in an incredibly reasonable tone, “will you -“ Stop does not have enough force behind it. Cut it out makes him sound either six years old or sixty on either side. “desist,” he says finally. Good, satisfying word that one, hard sounds at the start and finish, hissing s’s in the middle. People really should use that more.

“Sure I’ll desist,” Misha says, imitating his tone exactly, but she puts the lighter away. She doesn’t smoke, he asked her, but she likes to play with fire. Given how many dead kids lie between them and the other side of this gate, he’s not going to question. “I just wish I knew how they did it.”

Oh. That.

This year the Arena had another forest fire - they like those, helps flush tributes out of hiding - but when the boy from Nine dove into the lake to get away from it, the water raced right overtop and stayed there. Maybe he drowned waiting for the flames to die, maybe he suffocated trying to risk a breath at the surface, maybe the water boiled and he cooked like a fish right there, but either way he didn’t come back up again. The hovercrafts picked him up an hour later.

“I dunno.” Misha has a weird obsession with Arenas sometimes, trying to work out the logistics of how the Gamemakers’ technology works. Devon doesn’t understand it, but Brutus says it’s how she copes and nobody’s allowed to judge. “They do a lot of things.”

“You can put gasoline on water and set it on fire, but it’s not the liquid that burns, it’s the gas.” She clicks her tongue, annoyed. “I mean, not gas like gasoline, obviously the gasoline, I mean gas like - you know, the - fumes! The gasoline sits on top of the water and the fumes catch fire.”

Devon would ask how she knows this, but any time he asks questions like that Misha gets extremely patient in a way that means she wants to shake him and reminds him that she used to be a petty criminal. Which is why he blinks when Emory, napping under the willow, speaks up next. “Same reason you don’t throw water on a grease fire. Steam’s what’s burning, put water on it and you’ll light your ceiling.”

Okay, well, Devon did know that - first rule of cooking, slide a lid over the pot - but no one ever told him why. He does think it’s a bit unfair he’s the weird one for not connecting this sensible bit of quarry knowledge to arson. “You think they put petrol on the lake?”

“Obviously not.” They both lost tributes this year, Devon’s first time mentoring and Misha put her name in along with his, and he never asked if someone told her to because he’s afraid of what he’ll do if she says no. And it’s fine, it’s all fine, this is life now, except that every time Misha snaps at him or gets a little too impatient he wants to scream. He was there! They both were! She’s not the only one who lost! “Gasoline reeks, no one would go anywhere near it. But maybe something else? Who knows what goes on in the labs over there, it must be easy enough to come up with something flammable and insoluble that’s lighter than water and wouldn’t smell. Then all they need to do is have some kind of remote catalyst.”

“Misha,” says Emory, still without opening her eyes, “I’m gonna have to ask you not to set our lake on fire. It’s bad for the environment.”

“I just said you’d have to have very specialized equipment to do what they did, all we have is -“ Misha stops. “Okay, we do have … a lot … of gasoline. There are so many macho trucks. Fine, fair enough.”

Emory smiles with her eyes closed. She was backup for Devon this year, and really, this whole year was an ugly, incestuous round of sponsor-gotcha against one of the most important people in his life. Meanwhile Emory’s first year put her up against her mentor. Maybe that’s why Misha did it; get it over with now, first year out, hurt them both before someone else can do it to them.

“Tell you what,” Emory says, serene. “Once fire season’s done I’ll take you out with some fireworks, real nice ones. The kind you only get if Uncle Jordan knows the local Peacekeeper.”

“I almost got hold of those once.” Misha’s voice has gone nostalgic now. “Raided the PD a little after Harvest Festival but they caught me on the way out. You try being eleven and carrying a Panem Candle the size of your arm. God, that sounds fun.”

“That’s our girl.”

He almost doesn’t say it, but why not. There’s a whole new crop of dead kids in the ground and they have to find a way to live, right? “My brothers used to make their own.” Misha shouts yes! and Emory rolls over to give him a look that reminds him, very viscerally, that one of her mothers was a cop. “Yeah, it’s not that hard. They’d nick a couple of things from the munitions factory floor, like, from spills and stuff? The rest we had at home. We just had to make sure to light ‘em in the woods.”

“Sweet mercy,” Emory says in a tone that means she wants to say something else, but the President is always watching. Misha has her scheming face on, and she’s fashioning together a bunch of grasses and reeds to try to poke Emory in the foot. Emory, glaring, jerks her leg out of reach.

The next family barbecue is gonna be good, actually.

hallibahar and anastasia010 asked for PK!Volunteer Emory
- NOTE: pre-Arena, so no warnings I don't think


“You aren’t even supposed to be here.”

Emory’s interview gown is a weird silver thing with long lines to emphasize her height and laurel leaves around the collar to suggest victory (seems like jinxing it, in her opinion, but her stylist says they do it all the time and it’s completely in the rules). It’s silver, because, apparently, rocks. When they told her that she had a good ten seconds of staring, and the only thing that kept her from knocking some sense into these pretty little walking feathers was her Ma’s reminder that we don’t shame people for knowledge they were never given. Not their fault they’ve never seen a lick of limestone. Not their fault all the granite comes to them pre-polished and installed on countertops.

Emory wants to take them back with her on the district train and make them stand out on the bluffs, let them watch the sun set over a vein of raw, glittering quartz and feel how your heart takes a good, hard kick in your chest when the sky explodes in red and the mountains glow that soft, eerie blue.

She’s never gonna see that again, probably. Only artificial sunsets painted by Games artists who’ve spent years studying them on camera.

Weirdly, that brings the thoughts of tomorrow closer than any of the talking on stage and the bright lights and screaming people and super awkward questions from Caesar Flickerman and his shiny suits.

But she can’t dwell on it, because here’s Byron at the common table, dressed to match in silver and absolutely mangling the plate of watermelon slices. What did that fruit ever do to you, Emory thinks. She wouldn’t mind watermelon, actually, it’s one of the fruits you could get for nailing a kill or sucking up a pain test that could be grown right here in Two. She used to angle for them, and apples, rather than gunning for the showy finishes that would get you oranges or papayas.

She really is not on the ball today.

“What was I supposed to do,” Emory says finally. “Let her die? We both know Lindsey wasn’t going to step up. Someone had to do it. Remember? This is what happens when we break the rules.”

Will Lindsey’s punishment be lighter because Emory stepped in and saved District 2 from public disgrace? Emory hopes so.

Byron’s frown tightens. They haven’t talked much over the last week; Career pack posturing doesn’t count, and their mentors have handled most of the other interactions. But their mentors aren’t here now, running a quick strategy session before lights out, so here they are.

Or maybe it’s all on purpose. The trainers do that at the Academy sometimes, leave them alone before a test starts to see if they can figure out what they’re supposed to do. You work out who’s the leader that way, and which ones are only meant to follow orders.

“Yeah, fine, okay, you did the thing.” Byron smashes his fork so hard into the pile of watermelon that a seed goes flying, pinging off a side lamp. Emory watches it fall onto the plush carpet, oddly fascinated. “But you’re trying.”

Now it’s Emory’s turn to frown. “What?”

“Doing all the stations in training, throwing your weight around with One and Four. Getting a Nine in your private session. And then in your interviews, all that bullshit about going out there to fight. You didn’t want this! You washed out! You’re only here because the real volunteer choked.”

She’s also wearing a dress that could feed half a quarry town, but sure, let’s focus on the important stuff. “I have to commit,” Emory says, even though it’s taking most of her control not to snatch the fork away and rescue the poor melon. “The whole country is watching. I don’t need to repeat the training to you. As soon as I stepped onto that stage, I had to play the game.”

“Sure, for the cameras.” Byron finally, thank the mountains, sets down the fork, but only so he can push himself to his feet with the slow inevitability of a thundercloud. “Not to win.”

Realization hits right as he rounds the table. Emory should probably have a more Centre-appropriate response at the ready, but the only thing she can think right now is that her mamas didn’t raise no coward. “Sorry,” she says, in the tone her mother uses that means you better run, “that supposed to be an order? From you?”

Byron’s muscles tense like he’s about to throw himself across the room, and honestly, Emory would be damn fine if he did. Three kids cried at the interviews, and her dress is itchy, and maybe a bit of a tussle would put her head on right again.

“The hell is this?” barks Brutus from the doorway. Emory didn’t even notice him come in - so much for situational awareness. “Leave you two alone for five minutes and you’re squabbling like raccoons? Get back to your rooms, now.”

“Fuck you,” Byron spits on his way past. “I was gonna kill you quick, since you did your duty.”

Emory does not fling him a rude gesture, but boy, she thinks about it. “Don’t do me any favours,” she shoots back instead. “See you in the ring tomorrow.”

“For fuck’s sake, girl, save it for game-time,” Brutus grouses. “I like the energy, but don’t waste it here. Did you two murder a fucking watermelon?”

Emory grins.