thecapitol | If You Wanna Be My Lover [Closed]

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If You Wanna Be My Lover [Closed]

WHO| Venus, Enjolras, Maximus and Wyatt
WHAT| Double-date! Awkward dinner, and then rebellious alliances.
WHEN| The day after the Barricade Boys Barfight.
WHERE| District 5 Suites, then a restaurant
WARNINGS| You can say they're going out for fish and ships.

Before Enjolras went out last night, Venus called him aside and told him they were going to have plans for the next evening. She isn't sure how much of it he retained, being on his way out the District Five door to greet Courfeyrac, but at the very least when she grabs him tomorrow for their first double-date - and first date proper, actually - he won't be caught entirely unawares. She then sends a message to Maximus and heads straight to bed, exhausted by her mind and body readjusting to the medication the Capitol likes to shoot up her arm every week.

She spends the next day training, attacking dummies with the practiced, callous strength of someone who possesses technique and vigor but no passion for the exercise. She eats yogurt, and she spends some time with Kankri, and tapes a map to her wall, coloring in areas she's certain have camera coverage. She doesn't say out loud what she's doing.

That evening, she gets herself gussied up in a purple gladiator dress that she finds punny without being too suggestive, does her hair up, and covers her cut lip with a deep red that camouflages the scab formed there. She goes to find Enjolras, and stops in the doorway to his room, both because she figures he'll find it presumptuous should she enter, and because the sight of him surprises her. She expected he'd be reading something, but she didn't expect to see him with his lip puffy and swollen, his eye in a bed of pink and purple and blue, a blow subdermally draining blood around the corner of his mouth like a grey and red coffee stain.

Her first thought, naturally, is Peacekeepers, and Enjolras' big mouth.

"What happened to your face?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"What's there to say?"

Wyatt glanced at the man at beside him from the corner of his eye, the touch brief and small - a brush of knuckles against the back of a hand.

"They're goin' do an' say whatever they please 'bout it. What matters is what you've got to say."

Venus thinks that not naive, but stubbornly deluded. People will talk, yes, but they can be directed. She was asking not about the media cycle, which she feels relatively at home with, but about how it was they managed to become stronger through the stressors of the city rather than being pulled apart. It's their bond she was poking around, not the image. She's eager for advice that doesn't come from her magazines, and hasn't had the best role models to look to.

She ducks her head down and tries not to look upset at the brush-off by the two men, for her transgression there, for Enjolras' initial balk.

"I know how to handle people's chatter," she says. "I know the both of you find it distasteful, but I just try to be practical about it."

It's a precarious position, to be putting her emotions on the line in a scenario where she is so clearly out of her element. Her attempts to make it smooth have the possibility of backfiring.

Easing into their relationship though they are, Enjolras can still sense we abrupt uncertainty and gives Venus' hand a gentle squeeze of reassurance. It must be difficult for her to balance three people who clearly don't want to be there. Really, she's doing admirably. Anyone else would tremble and give up a the assortment of stubborn museum exhibits she's managed to gather together.

And, although she took Wyatt's words as a furthering of Maximus' terse brush off, something about them captured Enjolras' attention. "You are expressing your freedom by ignoring them and acting in your own interests. I admire that, Monsieur."

Okay, so maybe Wyatt hadn't meant it in quite that regard, but interpretation is never an easy thing.

He feels bad, as soon as he sees Venus' reaction, and as Enjolras takes a moment to speak to Wyatt, he ducks in his head towards hers, and speaks in a low voice.

"I merely take it as it comes, and take every moment as if it is my last, and I wish to share my last with him." It was honest, but it was sappy, and he hopes neither Enjolras or Wyatt overheard him.

It was an odd, momentary, drifting. The lines in the sand blurring, crossing as Max leaned toward Venus and Wyatt slowed a step to match Enjolras.

"It ain't so much 'bout rebellin' or defyin' anybody," he told the younger man, eyes steady on his face but for the moment they glanced away to make sure the woman passing on his other side had enough room.

He paused a moment, words as ever slippery. Still, somehow, never quite enough for what he wanted to say.

"They've taken everythin' else. ...They can put me in the arena, have me killed, but they can't take that. They won't take that."

That offers an interesting argument. On a certain level, even Enjolras can admit that through his riling against the Capitol he is still allowing them to dictate at least some of his action. Here Wyatt proposes, at least implicitly, a contrasting perspective; a method that might allow any of them to live for their own ends. It's attractive, even if he finds it impractical at least on its face.

"There is a delicate balance of intention and the way the Capitol perceives anything that we do. Venus is better at negotiating any of that than I shall ever be, but I think perhaps there is merit in what you say and even if they are willing to accept it as such." Being coolly critical of relationships within the Capitol is what had created the tension between everyone present in the first place. Still, Enjolras couldn't help himself from prodding at the line of good taste in the pursuit of a justification for any of their chosen paths. It did seem a rude on a certain level, however, even as he fell easily into step with Wyatt.

"I mean to say that regardless of your intention, people will take from it whatever they wish and you cannot deny both the benefits and the potential dangers to that. My esteemed colleague has already seen fit to inform me that I do anything at all against them, they will now very likely attack Venus. Surely your companion has similar concerns. Similarly, those who would support me will now support her in the Arena. It is, simply put, not a one-sided situation."

"You Romans go all out with the emotions thing, huh?" she says, under her breath. "I'm just trying not to fuck this up."

She knows she loves him, but the nature of the beast is elusive, camouflaged, indiscrete between friendship and romance. She cares for his safety and his peace of mind, overlooks the flaws she knows are there and tries to correct the ones she can't do that for, finds moments with him worth treasuring, but this is more new to her than she cares to let on. And putting it that way implies she may not feel the same way for her friends, and that isn't true either. She catches Max's eyes and at the same time gives Enjolras' hand a squeeze that starts from her wrist.

She tilts her head to hear the last of Enjolras' comment to Wyatt. "What we're saying is we hope you understand that whole conversation in the spirit it was meant, which wasn't as awful as it looked. Sounded."

"I cannot speak for Rome, but I am sure you are more capable than you give yourself credit for." Maximus said mildly, before turning as Venus did to catch the rest of the conversation, which served to immediately put him back on edge.

No one would dare harm Wyatt here in the Capitol.

Not unless they wanted him to bring their city down in ruins.

In the arena, he was more than certain of Wyatt's ability to take care of himself - and Venus', for that matter. He doubted any protection Enjolras could offer her by not crossing the wrong people amounted to much.

That was the nature of slavery.

He has so little interest in the conversation, however, that instead he just levels a dark look in Enjolras' direction before turning his head away. If Wyatt needed him to intervene, he'd say so.

Wyatt was silent for a moment, glancing at Venus, then looking back at Enjolras.

"So ya do what they want ya too, an' play their game. A bit here, an' a bit there. It's easier, it's safer." His gaze turned away, looking down the street as they walked rather than at anyone. "Everybody jus' does what they have too... then ya look up, an' seventy-four years have gone by an' nobody bats an eye over the murder of innocents."

It was a slippery slope. One Wyatt knew, felt, all too well.

The opposite of a slipper slope is a heap, the belief that small, seemingly insignificant changes cannot possibly add up to anything meaningful. Neither perspective is really very attractive to Enjolras. They both seem incomplete, shortsighted.

He feels for Venus' hand in his, glances from her to Wyatt, to Maximus to catch the clandestine dirty look from the Roman. It's hard not to think anything of it, but realistically he knows it's probably just residual resentment from their last meeting. The feeling is somewhat mutual.

There's an impulse to ask if Wyatt really wants to stick around for another seventy-four years and see how much safer they all are, but he chokes it down. When he finally works up the nerve to respond again to the conversation, they've practically arrived at the restaurant (if it can properly be called such), and it seems a little irrelevant.

"Do we have a reservation?" He asks Venus, moving to hold the door for her and the other men. Both actions are mainly for her, if he had to analyze them.

"Believe in me until I believe in me," she says to Max, touching his arm with her fingertips.

Her dark eyes meet Wyatt's, not with anger or hurt but with firmness that this is something they'll have to untangle. She's no longer feeling up to feeling lesser than for going about her life the way she does. She's no longer up to feeling misunderstood for coloring outside the lines.

"We do." She talks briefly to the host, realizing that she probably didn't need to go through those hoops. Their clout precedes them, even if this weren't the Speakeasy. The staff seem both excited and anxious to seat them, and upset that they want a booth instead of a private room. She takes a seat and gestures for Enj to sit next to her. "So. It seems that all of us are darlings here."

He reaches up when Venus's fingertips touch his arm, just for half a second, just to squeeze them gently in solidarity before letting his hands fall back to his side. He keeps his silence until they are in the restaurant, making sure that Wyatt takes his seat first before sitting down next to him, thigh pressed to thigh.

"So it seems," He agreed, all too willing to let Venus steer the conversation in a new direction. Despite his dislike of Enjolras, he would do his best to see her evening out a success.

It wasn't the usual booth that Wyatt and Max took for themselves, but he made no compliant, allowing himself to be boxed in by the wall on one side, Max on the other. Truth be told, he kind of liked it.

The press of their knees different from the way he might have otherwise casually crossed his ankles over Max's under the table, but no less pleasant.

"That don't surprise me," he murmured, leaning a bit to catch the eye of a barmaid. (No, he hardly needed a menu.) "The Speakeasy's always been fair to tributes."

Did more for them, than most of them knew.

"I find it too noisy." But noise does offer its own protection and even Enjolras can see that as he peers over the top of the large menu. It's hardly extensive, even for its size, and most of it is taken up by a long drink list in the back filled with names of cocktails he doesn't recognize.

"Is there a salad?" He ponders, half to himself, and leans over to look at Venus' menu as if hers will magically hold some other information on its shiny, laminated surface. He's not really hungry and he doesn't really care what they eat, but it's a distraction from the awkward way in which the night is progressing.

Around them, some of the other patrons are trading looks back and forth between themselves and casting long glances over at the quartet's table. It's uncomfortable, but entirely to be expected, given the situation. At least the restaurant staff seems relatively unaffected by their presence.

"If you're not hungry we can get something to split," she says, stroking her chin as she looks over the menu. Her Stylists have told her not to do that now that she has a human body (touching your face too much will give you acne, dear), but it's a force of habit. When she isn't doing that, she's rubbing her thumb over the side of her fingers.

Normally she wouldn't be so nervous, and she believes that if she were having dinner with three people who all wanted to see her dead, she'd be much more at ease. Under the table, her knee touches Enjolras'.

She leans in. "Anyway. Anyway." She's finding that's a verbal tic she's been returning to a lot lately. "I didn't invite us all here to stare awkwardly at each other. I invited us here because I want us all on the same page regarding who our enemies are."

Maximus didn't bother reading the menu. His reading comprehension was still awful, so he'd taken to just ordering whatever they had on special. He wasn't picky. Food here was never as it was, back home.

He frowned as Venus finally got to the point, and tensed slightly, glancing at Wyatt.

"I would have thought that would be clear enough," He said vaguely, his voice careful.

Wyatt shifted slightly, and met Max's quick glance out of the corner of his eye.

"Unless ya got someone more particular in mind," he added after a pause, voice lowering a fraction as the barmaid approached with his usual bottle and wine for Max.

It wasn't just himself he took care for: it was Max, it was the pretty little thing bringing their drinks. For the folks he knew were in the back,... including Elias, he remembered with a jolt.

(He'd been meaning to get Max and the mentor together, introduce them. Here Venus was, reminding him of something he shouldn't have forgotten.)

His eyes darted from the menu to search for Venus' when their legs touched, but Enjolras is able to choke down the urge to tell her that it's improper. Fortunately the conversation moves along quickly and interestingly.

"We have all been in enough Arenas to make enemies." Instead of looking at her it's more productive to look to the two men seated across from them. He still can't know them enough to predict how such a comment would go over. "Both in and out of the Games. I think that Venus has the right idea. If we are to be allies, we must know explicitly where we stand with each other."

She doesn't go any further with her knee under the table, but she does meet Enjolras' eyes with a question in her face before turning back to Max and Wyatt. Is this okay? It's still so difficult testing the boundaries of what they're both comfortable with, so invested in each others' minds and hearts that they have no idea what to do with flesh and blood.

"Really? Because the infighting between the Tributes tells me we've lost focus." She takes the lemon out of her drink and wrinkles her nose a bit as she sets it aside. She's found none of the fondness for sourness that she has for sweets. As if to make her point, she glances over at Enjolras' black eye and split lip, and rubs her finger over the cut on her own mouth.

"We have sentiment on our side, but you can't tell me that there's anything in the way of proper organization. And I'm not the organizing type, honestly, but someone out there has to just...not tapping all the good will they've got from the Tribs here."

"Gladiators do not generally organize their own sentiment," Maximus said, his voice even and steady, not looking over again at Wyatt no matter how much he wished to. It wasn't even true, memory flashing back to his own arenas, to the whispers from the gladiators as he prepared for battle.

Spaniard, Spaniard, Spaniard...

"As I recall," Wyatt chose his words carefully, gaze ahead on Venus' as the back of his neck prickled.

As he imagined eyes boring down them. Ears leaning in.

"That's all of us were brought here. To pacify folks who were organizin'."

"And they needed to be pacified. Which implies that they were considered to be a threat." Which, in turn, meant that they likely hadn't simply disappeared. Technology may have changed since his time, but Enjolras would have placed all the money of his family estate on the bet that sentiments of rebellion were more or less immutable. People could be silenced, of course, but rarely did the people simply give in, when no true action had been taken.

He fished the lemon away from Venus' area of the table, tentatively biting into it as he let the sentiment settle over the rest of the table. The citrus burned into the cut on his lip, immediately making him reconsider the move. "What do we know about them, other than that we were a reactionary move to their efforts?"

"We know that a little bit before you and I got here, they supposedly bombed the Training Center and killed a Tribute. We know that they can hack the network, or at least someone can who makes it look like them."

She folds her hands, one over the other, and rests her head on them, elbows to the table.

"It's not much, but it's enough to believe that there's organization going on somewhere. Just not within the Tributes. The Arena's an, um, a microcosm of the District rivalries. We're too busy trying to survive to organize."

Well, that made everything all too clear, and Maximus' lips thinned sharply as he glanced hard to Wyatt. There was no beating around the bush now.

"I hadn't been aware that you were so interested in their dilemma," Maximus said, more to Venus than Enjolras. He couldn't speak for that man, after all, but he hadn't thought Venus to have major rebellious tendencies.

At Max's side, Wyatt was silent, but attentive, looking from Venus to Enjolras and back again. Watching their faces, hers especially, and waiting for the reply.

If they meant it, if he believed it (and they would have to be damn convincing, with everything Wyatt stood to risk), then the way forward would be clear to him.

If You Wanna Be My Lover [Closed]

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Welp I messed up their order last round. Sorry guys.

how dare you tho

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