Howard Bassem (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iselldrugstothecommunity) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-01-06 07:56 pm
iselldrugstothecommunity) wrote in thecapitol2014-01-06 07:56 pm
Entry tags:
Do You Ever Think, Maybe It'll All Be Better in the Morning? [Closed]
WHO| Howard and Wyatt
WHAT| Howard clings to Wyatt.
WHEN| A few days before the District Tours
WHERE| District 10 Suite
WARNINGS| Some suicidal ideation, nightmares.
He tries to keep the fear that crushes his chest at night to himself. He hasn't been sleeping in John's room for a while now, and he's been trying to keep to a regular schedule, and that means sleeping at night in his District One room now that it's too cold outside. Ever since the District Tours were announced, the feeling has been getting worse.
In his dreams he's in a snow suit so heavy and warm that he can't move, that he can barely breathe, and someone is moving just beyond his peripheral vision. He can hear their footsteps, and he realizes he's facedown on a concrete floor. Nothing hurts, but there's blood pooling around his face, sticky like a theater floor, he thinks. He feels the foot on his back and the breath on the back of his neck but it doesn't matter, because he can't squirm away from the mouth that parks next to his ear and whispers to him.
"You'll never go hungry again. You'll never cry." Crystal clear, as if it had been recorded and replayed rather than remembered. Every nuance of the words, of the way Aunamee's breath caught between sentences, of the saliva on the consonants of 'cry' popping across teeth, reemerges in loving detail. "I wish I didn't have to go so far to protect you."
And then, like so many similar dreams before it, the knife. No, not the knife, the impending blow. The knowledge that the knife is there, that someday the knife will come down again in his dreams and maybe he won't wake up in time, maybe he won't wake up at all-
When he wakes up he can't breathe. He can't even sit up. He shivers in sweat-soaked sheeted and stares at the ceiling and scrapes up breath, paddling it into his screaming lungs for minutes that stretch like hours. When he sits up, he's so dizzy that he falls out of bed and gags, though he manages to keep his stomach down until he gets to the bathroom.
The face he sees in the bathroom mirror hardly looks like his. His eyes are bloodshot, dark circles eroded above his cheeks, and his tongue is bleeding from biting it in his sleep. His jaw hurts from grinding his teeth, and the pain travels up his cheekbones to the headache pounding away in the sockets of his eyes. He spits, then throws on a heavy coat and escapes the hell of this room.
When he tries to go to the roof, his hands are still shaking so hard that he accidentally hits the wrong elevator button at first. He spends a long time up there, until his bare feet are numb and his shaking has turned to shivering, until the snowflakes catching in his eyelashes remind him too much of that Arena in the snow. Until he can't fight the question of whether that force field around the lip of the roof actually works anymore. He retreats again before the compulsion to do something drastic forces his feet over the edge.
It's only been twenty minutes, but it feels as if whole days have passed by the time he knocks gently on Wyatt's door, trying not to wake anyone else in the District.
WHAT| Howard clings to Wyatt.
WHEN| A few days before the District Tours
WHERE| District 10 Suite
WARNINGS| Some suicidal ideation, nightmares.
He tries to keep the fear that crushes his chest at night to himself. He hasn't been sleeping in John's room for a while now, and he's been trying to keep to a regular schedule, and that means sleeping at night in his District One room now that it's too cold outside. Ever since the District Tours were announced, the feeling has been getting worse.
In his dreams he's in a snow suit so heavy and warm that he can't move, that he can barely breathe, and someone is moving just beyond his peripheral vision. He can hear their footsteps, and he realizes he's facedown on a concrete floor. Nothing hurts, but there's blood pooling around his face, sticky like a theater floor, he thinks. He feels the foot on his back and the breath on the back of his neck but it doesn't matter, because he can't squirm away from the mouth that parks next to his ear and whispers to him.
"You'll never go hungry again. You'll never cry." Crystal clear, as if it had been recorded and replayed rather than remembered. Every nuance of the words, of the way Aunamee's breath caught between sentences, of the saliva on the consonants of 'cry' popping across teeth, reemerges in loving detail. "I wish I didn't have to go so far to protect you."
And then, like so many similar dreams before it, the knife. No, not the knife, the impending blow. The knowledge that the knife is there, that someday the knife will come down again in his dreams and maybe he won't wake up in time, maybe he won't wake up at all-
When he wakes up he can't breathe. He can't even sit up. He shivers in sweat-soaked sheeted and stares at the ceiling and scrapes up breath, paddling it into his screaming lungs for minutes that stretch like hours. When he sits up, he's so dizzy that he falls out of bed and gags, though he manages to keep his stomach down until he gets to the bathroom.
The face he sees in the bathroom mirror hardly looks like his. His eyes are bloodshot, dark circles eroded above his cheeks, and his tongue is bleeding from biting it in his sleep. His jaw hurts from grinding his teeth, and the pain travels up his cheekbones to the headache pounding away in the sockets of his eyes. He spits, then throws on a heavy coat and escapes the hell of this room.
When he tries to go to the roof, his hands are still shaking so hard that he accidentally hits the wrong elevator button at first. He spends a long time up there, until his bare feet are numb and his shaking has turned to shivering, until the snowflakes catching in his eyelashes remind him too much of that Arena in the snow. Until he can't fight the question of whether that force field around the lip of the roof actually works anymore. He retreats again before the compulsion to do something drastic forces his feet over the edge.
It's only been twenty minutes, but it feels as if whole days have passed by the time he knocks gently on Wyatt's door, trying not to wake anyone else in the District.
no subject
A death. A denial. A loss, sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes both.
He started at the rap on the wood, coming awake with a jerk, body wound in the sheets - fists buried in the fabric. It wasn't until the tap came again that he really understood what had happened.
Shifting, disentangling himself carefully, he reached for the trousers draped over the chair by his bed. Skin prickling as his sweat dried, he tugged the pants on and crossed slowly to the door.
"...Howard?" He blinked blurrily at the boy, looking disheveled and weary himself. Uncertain, there in the doorway. "Everythin' alright?"
His first and foremost concern always.
no subject
He'd been hoping Wyatt was awake. Been hoping that this wouldn't be a disruption, as Howard's involvement in things often is. The only saving grace is that Maximus isn't sharing the room.
"I just- I need- I need to talk. Please. Please." Already the trust issues, stoked by the upcoming tours, are heating up his mind.
no subject
The soft blue light in the room - moonlight through the trees on the far wall - was replaced by the amber glow from the ceiling, and the quiet sounds of the hologram faded away. The bed was rumpled, the sheets still twisted where Wyatt had been tangled up, but was empty by the luck of the draw.
(It had been easy, so natural to ask him to stay before. Now.... He still wanted him there, more than anything, but he didn't want to push, didn't want to ask Max for more than he could give.)
He reached for his shirt and gestured to the desk chair, offering Howard a seat.
"What's on yer mind, son?"
no subject
"They're sending me to District One." He takes a deep breath. The back of his mouth tastes like bile still. "And they're sending you to District Ten."
He wonders if Wyatt is most bothered by Max going to District Three. And, for some reason, the fact that Aunamee is going to District Seven is no comfort to Howard.
Aunamee lives wrapped around his own spinal cord, around every synapse in his brain.
"I can't sleep."
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What most about the tours might cause the upset he could see clearly in the dark circles under Howard's eyes, in the angry welt in his lip where he'd plucked and pulled at himself.
"Ain't nothin' to upset yerself over, Howard," he said after a pause. "It ain't goin' to be permanent. We'll all be back here together in a week."
Just in time to head back into the arena.
He tried not to think about that.
no subject
"What if you don't come back?"
What if they take Wyatt far, far from him and leave him there? Or worse, what if Wyatt goes willingly?
It more terrifying than the upcoming Arena, and Howard doesn't even know if he'll survive that. Worse, he doesn't know if he'll survive it even if he lives through it.
no subject
He shook it open and held it out to Howard, taking his seat again.
"I'd take ya with me," he told him, hands threading together between his knees. "I won't lie to ya, I do -- I wanna see it, for myself. But I'd take ya with me, if I could. I wish I could."
Him and Max, both. District Ten wasn't really home, not anymore. He knew that, but with them there... maybe it could be.
no subject
"I'd try to sneak onto your train, but..." He holds up a trembling hand to show off the cuff. The reminder to watch his step.
"Wyatt, I," he chuckles dryly, morosely, before lifting his thumb to his lips to chew on his nail. "I know all these things and it doesn't stop me being scared, you know?"
no subject
To know you weren't alone in your thoughts. To know there was truth in the words.
And at a loss to able to help any other way....
"If I could change it, I would, son. But the Capitol ain't never been real big on doin' on what I'd like 'em to."
no subject
He rocks again, head keeling to one side then the next, leg jittering. "This Arena's got to be my last, Wy. I don't think- I don't-"
He looks down at his feet. His toes are curled up, clenched as they warm back up. It feels selfish to say he can't take another Arena when Wyatt's done more.
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Seven arenas, that was the weight on Wyatt's shoulders. Seven, that he'd take into the next one with him. He didn't want to go back, didn't want to die again.
But he could find room on his back for another. Could carry that much more, for someone he cared about.
"I will do everythin' I can, to make sure it is."
He wished he could give Howard a guarantee, but he knew better than that by now. He made a promise, and the arena would find a way to break it.
no subject
It hadn't even hurt, dying. He found out later it was because of a numbing agent the Gamemakers were pumping into the air. All he can really remember is the taste of blood, the taste that still rides the back of his tongue when he sleeps and remembers that Arena in the snow.
He wonders if he'd feel this way if he'd died by someone else's hands back there, or if his mind just selected that awful death of many potential options to latch onto.
"I don't know if I would have got up if it wasn't to make sure I could buy you medicine." He needs people to anchor him to the world when simple pleasures won't do. When he can't find happiness, he needs guilt to keep him from leaving entirely. He needs Wyatt, and he needs John and Orc and Eponine and Sigma.
"Can you call me, when I'm- when we're in the Districts, just keep in touch with me, please. You don't even have to talk direct to me, just use the network or something so I know you're still out there and they haven't done nothing to you."
no subject
And not just the medicine. That had saved his life, but the note - telling him that they were both alright, that they were both waiting for him - that had given him something to live for. Something to fight for when so much of him had wanted to lie down and let go.
Untangling his hands, he moved again, standing to pull open the dresser drawer again. He had to dig this time, searching, clothes rustling, fingers thumping gently against the wood....
He pulled out the communicator. The strange boxy machine he'd ever used that once - that night Ariadne had been caught.
He held it out to Howard.
"Show me?"
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Howard takes it and nearly drops it. The shakes haven't gone away yet. They've always been an inconvenient - and pervasive - way his fear has manifested.
He gets up and sits down on the bed so that they can look at it side-by-side. "It'll, um, it'll show your face and you talking and we can talk in real-time, like...you know that. This is the button that turns it on."
He turns off the internet connectivity on the device for now. He doesn't want to broadcast him teaching Wyatt to use the network - at least, he doesn't want to broadcast that this is what Howard looks like at night. A skeleton wrapped in ghosts and nightmares with a coat on and bare feet.
no subject
Seemed like a small, simple thing he could do to ease the boy's discomfort.
"Avox showed me this bit," he reached over and tapped one of the buttons on the screen, opening up the program that would take his message and send it out. "It's like a telegraph, but with pictures an' no wires."
And he didn't need to know the code, or have a translator that did.
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"Yeah. If you want to post for everyone, you just record like this, and when you're done, drag it here..." He goes through the basics of posting and logging. He wouldn't be a terrible teacher. He's thorough and has a natural sense of where to skip over things and where to explain more fully.
Years with Orc, there.
"Can I stay here tonight? Just a few hours?"
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He followed along, watching Howard's hands raptly, asking only one or two questions, when they felt necessary.
He felt, when Howard finished up, that he a fair understanding of it - he might still need a guiding hand when the time came, but he'd get through in a pinch, he thought.
"A'course, stay as long as ya want," he said, taking back the communicator and returning it to its drawer. "Take the bed an' get some sleep if ya think ya can, I can make up a roll on the floor."
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He paces around a patch of floor like a dog circling before sitting.
"It's okay in my room most of the time, you know? Just when I'm real stressed, I get. You know." Wyatt saw Howard wake from nightmares in the last Arena, and in Disneyland before that. "I scare myself."
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Instead he went to the closet and dragged down an extra pair of blankets from the shelf above his hanging clothes.
"It's alright, Howard." He handed down the blankets to him and crossed back toward his bed, pausing long enough to hit the little switch by the door again, the room dropping back into the silvery glow of the hologram. "Yer always welcome here, whenever ya need it."
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"Well, it was either here or the roof, and it's cold up there." He bunches up some blanket at the end to serve as a pillow. "Thanks, Wyatt."
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Peeled the rest of the way off, his shirt was draped back over the chair and the mattress shifted, sheets rustling as Wyatt slipped between them. There was more soft movement and the gentle clink of metal, then his trousers flopped over the chair again and quiet descended.
"G'night, Howard."