thecapitol | Tell Me I'm Gonna Be Alright [Open]

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Tell Me I'm Gonna Be Alright [Open]

WHO| Howard and OPEN
WHAT| Binge-eating is a public sport.
WHERE| Below Timberline
WHEN| A few days after the rave.
WARNINGS| None yet.

It was a bad idea to give Howard a credit card. At least, unless the Gamemakers intended for him to get himself into ridiculous amounts of debt in record time eating out, which they probably did. As soon as he found a restaurant and the fact that the credit card apparently meant 'infinite money' to him, his mind was set on milking it for all it's worth.

Which is, at the moment, a few plates and some doggie boxes full of food to take home. It doesn't matter that there's foods in the suites. For the moment, he's living in the land of plenty, and he's going to take every opportunity he can to enjoy it. His stomach perpetually aches and cramps with the feeling of being too full, but after too many months of brutal starvation, he'll take that feeling over hunger. After two plates he's even managed to stop eating with his hands and go back to using silverware, although he still brings each plate close to him as if certain the other patrons are going to try and take it from him.

He just wishes people would stop staring at him. He knows it's inevitable, he's a tribute, and while he isn't one who did very well he did bash someone's head in. Every time they look at him, he's reminded of that. He tells himself that Lottie's alive and death isn't real in the arena, but just the idea of it makes the otherwise delicious food seem tasteless.

"There is a limit on this card, you know," someone says as they ring it up for another plate.

"Shut up," he says in return.

And when there's another full plate in front of him he starts on that, too, the taste on his tongue reminding him that here in the Capitol, he's safe. In this place, the bad things are temporary inconveniences until you come back to this life of luxury. He's going to be okay.

Another forkful, he's going to be okay.

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Hopefully they'll never have to, he thinks. The waiter brings back his order and he starts on that, too, even though his stomach is shuddering and protesting.

"Yeah, well, I'm good at torturing myself." He wrinkles his nose. "I couldn't really help it. Couldn't think about anything else. And no one has light at night where I'm from, so it's just you and your thoughts and, I don't know, killer plagues and wild animals."

"It was not always so bad in Paris. There were rats, but that is the most dangerous, and the cough."
She means typhoid.
"But at night, that was when the city came to life. Singing and dancing in the inns and people falling in the road so you could rob 'em. There'd be men waiting in the shadows, and the Ladies at the park catcalling and warballing to get the attention of gentlemen. It was dangerous, yes, but Paris... she BREATHED. Everything lit up. Sometimes the moon would light the streets and I could wander through them as if it were day. You need only be scared if you were not one of us. You would like it maybe? Sometimes I liked it. Sometimes it was bad. I don't think on that if I can help, either."

Howard smiles a bit. He has no such nice things to say about Perdido Beach, at least, not the way it was when he left it. But buried deep down there are still good memories of skipping school to hang out by the cliffs, chatting with his group in the salty ocean air, relaxing in the sun, rigging skateboards and throwing rocks at the highway.

"Sounds interesting, at least. Never a dull day in Paris." He chews the tip of his fork, having cleared another plate. "Would you go back? I mean, would you leave this for Paris?"

She stops eating, considering.

"That I do not know... They are both as bad as each other. I would take bits from each and make a new place. I would take the wealth here - but I would have M'sieur Marius and his friends, and there would be no killing in arenas. Just food and good times. I wouldn't thieve, and my Papa, he could have an inn again. And such technology as is here. That I would take. Television and the such. And maybe, maybe in that world, Marius might love me. Would you? Go home, I mean?"

"Hell no. There's nothing back there." He runs his finger around the edge of his plate. "But your ideal world sounds nice. I'd hang out there. Probably rent a room in your dad's in or whatever."

"I would not reccommend that." She laughs.

"You would stay a week and owe him over one hundred francs. My Papa, he knows how to work the books. Everything is extra at my Papa's inn, even sleeping with the window shut - though he will say 'open' if you do that. If I had my way, though, everyone would get at least a room and a bed and some food each day. Everyone."

"So that's where you get it from." He smirks. "Even if they can't pay? Then you're not running an inn, you're running a charity."

"Get what from?"

Eponine shoots him a puzzled look, before scooping up the end of her cake. Stomach full, she sprawls back in her chair, clutching it as she fights the bile she can feel rising.

"Would you cast someone out if they could not pay? I slept a whole winter under a bridge because I could not pay. That I would wish on nobody."

"Your sneakiness. I know you steal. I do too, it's nothing to be ashamed of."

He shrugs. "Any money I waste on someone else is money I don't have later, when I really need it. It's not my fault they have to sleep under a bridge. That could be me if I'm not careful."

Eponine bites her lip. She is already known as a thief?

"When you need money... Or perhaps I am just a bad girl?"

She laughs; it sounds out of place and ill at ease, though Eponine means it to be charming.

" Well, then, I shall hope you are never my landlord, to turn families with children out in the winters. Me, no. I would not do that; in summer, it is not bad. I sleep outside often then. I like to look at the stars. But the winter, in just a skirt and blouse, and the snow falling; no shoes. All day, every day you think, 'How cold it is. Shall I wake in the morning or will the cold turn me into a statue. That was the only time I was grateful for the men to take me home or even outside."

Still fighting bile, Eponine has a green tinge to her face, from both the cake and from her words.

"No, if I have to, I would wait till spring to throw them out."

He shrugs. "Like I said, people like us don't got to worry about good and bad that way."

He listens without pity to her discourse on cold. It's not a hell he's known. He's known starving and fear and sickness and darkness, but not cold. Perdido's always been temperate.

"Don't puke on me," he says quietly. He doesn't want to argue about why he thinks it's okay to be a horrible person.

"Puke?"

She swallows, trying to breathe slowly, in and out.

"I wish I could just be good. But there are a lot of bad people here; perhaps this is why we are chosen. Perhaps it isn't heaven, but hell, to feed us food to make us sick and dress us as whores and make us kill?"

"Throw up. Um, vomit. Whatever."

He shakes his head. "If this is Hell, I'm okay with it. We'll slow down on eating eventually, and dying...I guess it's not too bad if you're not afraid of it."

"I am not afraid. I was to die in France; Papa would have, or his gang. And if they did not, cramps and cold and no food would do it. I am not AFRAID to die - but I do not want to do it over and over. When that man stuck his knife in my throat - all for a loaf of bread... No. This I do not want again. Especially for the citizens to laugh at me."

"You want my opinion?" She hasn't asked for it, but Howard's going to give it anyway. "Citizens laughing at us isn't worth worrying about. I'd say buh-bye to my pride before I'd die for real."

Her pride is all Eponine has. And it is something she would not give up for anything. It is her face, her front, when things are bad. It's what gets her into trouble at home. It is what makes her her. She will show people that though she might be scum, she does things on her own terms.

"I will not be laughed at and I will not be controlled. I think we will never agree, M'sieur."

"That's okay. I don't need to agree with everyone I talk to." He taps his credit card on the counter. "I should go back to the suites and like. Shower."

He could shower all day, honestly.

"Shower... Yes. I like showers. I am not going back though; my stylist wants me to try on horrible clothes. They are not even clothes, really... I just want a red velvet dress. That is all, but she laughs at that."

Eponine grins and stands up.

"Come. Let us make a run and save our money for another day."

"So you're just going to sleep outside?"

Howard gets up, a little gingerly because he stomach is turning. "Credit cards don't work that way. We already paid."

Which is sad, because he totally likes the idea of stiffing their waiter.

"It wouldn't be the first time."

She looks defiant for a moment, but then she sighs. Soft beds and feather pillows are far too alluring. It's somehow easier to sleep outside when there's nothing to go back to.

"But I shall go. Come, shall we walk?"

She too, gets up stiffly, clutching her bubbling stomach. "Oh, I feel sick."

She has no concept of credit cards. "I thought they were like, things so they would know who we are."

She sounds crestfallen. "I had thought I had been running without paying. I'm going to have no money now."

"Sure. I could use company." And they can both move slowly so as not to upset their stomachs any further.

He smiles at the woeful look on her face. "Hey, don't worry. They still feed us at the suites, and if not, the people here throw out better things in their garbage than I ate in the whole last year."

And he's not above dumpster diving. In fact, the jacket he's wearing now was grabbed from a trash can, because his stylists insisted on ones that were too tight and form-fitting. 'With your body we could try for androgyny-chic', they'd said, and he'd wanted to spot at them.

She smiles briefly, and makes her way outside. Her stomach feels huge and bubbles a little under her hand.

"I know - it is not food I think of... I was thinking I could take my money home with me when we are allowed. I could buy a little room and maybe learn to sew so I could do mending or something."

Or maybe it'd shut her dad up and make him leave her alone for a little while.

"But if it is on these cards... I don't think we have such a thing in my Paris."

She laughs again though. "Garbage! I like that word. They do, do they not? Such food as even the students would go mad for in Paris, let alone us. It was a good day to get food from the 'garbage'; my brother, Gavroche - he was good at this. He knew how to rob a bin without being noticed."

She walks slowly through the streets as they chat, in no hurry at all to go back to the training centre.

"Ah." He has no desire to ever return home, so he forgets that for her it's a possibility, maybe even a hope. "Maybe you could bring the technology from here to Paris and advance them a little bit."

He laughs with her. "We could use your brother around here. I got caught, but used my Tribute star power to get out of trouble." His tone darkens slightly. "I guess they think it's kind of cute, here, like we're their pets and that whatever we do is really charming and quaint."

"I could take this... but we have nothing to get money out of it. I have never even seen... is it called plastic? We do not have such a thing in Paris."

She laughs again.

"You were CAUGHT? How? You were robbing a bin?"

Although her smile fades as he adds the bit about them being like pets.

"Cute? I am not a pet and I am not to be 'quaint' or 'charming' to make them happy. These people - they need to go to our worlds and see how it is. Then they will not think we are cute. They make me feel sick, even more than their food."

"Nah, this is just worth plastic. But I mean, bring back some phones, or cameras, or man, even just penicillin or something. I bet you can find medicine here for half the shit you have back home."

He laughs back. "Yeah, someone yelled at me because I was pulling stuff from a bin. I was ready to pull a knife on them or something, but then they noticed I was a Tribute and laughed it off."

He nods. "Yeah, it's...creepy. And insulting. Like the stuff we scrape through is a fun story for them, even when we're right in front of them with scars all over and all."

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