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)
thecapitol2014-05-08 02:06 am
iselldrugstothecommunity) wrote in thecapitol2014-05-08 02:06 am
Entry tags:
My Hungry Ghost of Hopefulness [Closed]
WHO| Howard and his interviewers (Rat, Eponine and possibly Roland), Howard and Orc, Howard and R, Howard and Wyatt
WHAT| Howard petitions out
WHEN| Before the latest Panem Nightly
WHERE| Tribute Suites
WARNINGS| None, but suicidal ideation may come up.
The paper in his hands is crumpled and grimy with sweat. He's been holding it in his hands for the last two days, picking it up over and over again to check times, check room numbers, make sure that he's ready to make his appointments. He doesn't sleep well, waking from nightmares where he misses his alarm, where he forgets what language is during his interview.
Despite his best efforts, he hasn't really been able to make himself look presentable. Typically he looks better after a few weeks in the Capitol to put some fat on his painfully skinny body, but the stress of waiting for his petition to process has done him no favors. He has dark circles under his eyes, which appear almost bulbous atop his hollow cheeks. His fingers on each hand are covered with scabs up to the first knuckle. His lips are covered with canker sores and he's developed a twitch in his right leg that ambushes him when he sits down.
He doesn't feel ready, and he doesn't feel like he'll feel any better once he's done with each interview. He gets to the doors over an hour in advance and paces outside them, lost, it seems, in his own shallow breathing and possible rejection. He knows, deep in his stomach, what he has to do if his petition is denied. He knows he can't handle another Arena. And yet while he isn't allowing himself to contemplate willfully, images of how he has to die start trickling into his mind and lurking in the shadows.
He knocks on the door at exactly the correct time for each interview.
-/-
After each one, there is no dissipation of tension. There's no feeling of relief, that he's done the hard part. The hard part is still the waiting, and that's still happening, like a car wreck he's going through in slow motion. He tries to sit by himself in his room but, to put it politely, he psychs himself out.
(The truth is that he finds himself unable to breathe, finds his legs unable to support his weight, starts shaking so hard he has to lie down and stare at the ceiling as if the white paint above him will swallow him up.)
He gets up and takes the elevator to District 4 and District 10. He goes and he finds his friends, no matter how they currently feel about him.
WHAT| Howard petitions out
WHEN| Before the latest Panem Nightly
WHERE| Tribute Suites
WARNINGS| None, but suicidal ideation may come up.
The paper in his hands is crumpled and grimy with sweat. He's been holding it in his hands for the last two days, picking it up over and over again to check times, check room numbers, make sure that he's ready to make his appointments. He doesn't sleep well, waking from nightmares where he misses his alarm, where he forgets what language is during his interview.
Despite his best efforts, he hasn't really been able to make himself look presentable. Typically he looks better after a few weeks in the Capitol to put some fat on his painfully skinny body, but the stress of waiting for his petition to process has done him no favors. He has dark circles under his eyes, which appear almost bulbous atop his hollow cheeks. His fingers on each hand are covered with scabs up to the first knuckle. His lips are covered with canker sores and he's developed a twitch in his right leg that ambushes him when he sits down.
He doesn't feel ready, and he doesn't feel like he'll feel any better once he's done with each interview. He gets to the doors over an hour in advance and paces outside them, lost, it seems, in his own shallow breathing and possible rejection. He knows, deep in his stomach, what he has to do if his petition is denied. He knows he can't handle another Arena. And yet while he isn't allowing himself to contemplate willfully, images of how he has to die start trickling into his mind and lurking in the shadows.
He knocks on the door at exactly the correct time for each interview.
-/-
After each one, there is no dissipation of tension. There's no feeling of relief, that he's done the hard part. The hard part is still the waiting, and that's still happening, like a car wreck he's going through in slow motion. He tries to sit by himself in his room but, to put it politely, he psychs himself out.
(The truth is that he finds himself unable to breathe, finds his legs unable to support his weight, starts shaking so hard he has to lie down and stare at the ceiling as if the white paint above him will swallow him up.)
He gets up and takes the elevator to District 4 and District 10. He goes and he finds his friends, no matter how they currently feel about him.
no subject
He pulls back from R, then opens his body language, as if bringing himself for inspection. His hands are shaky. His lips are pocked and bloody, his eyes hollow, chin quaking slightly with exhaustion and nerves. This is what living looks like. Thriving, no, but living.
Why would R want to feel fear as keenly as a breathing human being does? Why does he want the lance of panic slicing through his brain, or the oppressive anxiety that wraps around him like steel wool? What is there to gain from any of that?
He meets R's eyes, the flat dirty pale gaze that Howard still finds life in. The eyes are the windows to the soul - R's windows are fogged, but they're still glass panes and a frame. "No, you really don't want to be alive. Not while you're a Tribute, man. Maybe we both- maybe we both should count our blessings."
Maybe it's just the grass being greener. Whatever.
no subject
R catches himself staring at Howard's mouth, chapped, raw in places. He bets he'll ease on the lip picking and the chronic nail-biting once - not if - his petition goes through. Maybe he'll work out kissing.
"Guess...so..." R mumbles. He tries to look on the bright side, all the things that Howard can do without murder hanging over his head. "Make...list. Stuff...to do. Busy...here."
R lifts his hand and taps a limp finger against Howard's forehead. Keep that nice and busy and maybe he won't wake up screaming. His hand flops back to rest on his thigh, R's head lolling to face forward.
no subject
It's the only kind of damage they can repair.
"I could clean your bedroom," Howard says, looking at the little piles of stashed treasure, then tries to laugh. It's a mouse of a giggle, but it's something. "I could clean my bedroom."
Though at this point that could be a several-person job. Howard used to have to chase the Avoxes away, lock them out. Now they stay away naturally, probably repelled by the smell.
"Can I stay here tonight?" He knows what a favor it is to ask, to say to a hungry zombie, muzzle or not, that he's willing to lie helpless in sleep here. He also hopes it's taken as it's meant.
no subject
He suspects he used to have clean freak tendencies when he was alive, given the vague sense of organization he had back at the airport compared to most of the other zombies, but he knows what Howard's hoard looks like. It makes even his stockpile at the 747 look small, insignificant despite the fact it had several years' headstart. A scrawny kid and a stumbling zombie trying to make a dent in that thing seems impossible, even to R. You think a zombie used to the inevitability of Death wouldn't be so quick to say it's a lost cause.
"Stay," R jerks his head in a nod, startled Howard's brave enough to ask. Then again, this is the kid who dared to remove his muzzle and, on top of that, kiss the mouth that had ripped off its share of faces. "Wake...you...up."
R has a shaky concept of time at best but he figures if Howard says something as simple as "when the sun comes up", he can get it. Probably get it. The main point is he won't murder Howard in his sleep and he's proud to say he's actually certain about that. This isn't the Arena. To show he means business, R stumbles to his feet and moves a few yards away to root through his pile that he's designated, in his mind, to mean clothes/blankets/etc that caught his eye. He fishes out a hideous quilt with alternating patches for each District, heavily idealized. Basically the Capitol citizen's idea of what life really like is in the Districts. The colors clash.
"Here." R holds it out.
/wrap ;_; also love the bit about the quilt
"I'll probably wake myself up, honestly." R's seen him waking up screaming, or crying, or hyperventilating. He really has nothing to hide, and that's a decent enough antidote to the shame he feels whenever it happens. It's been enough times. "But if I don't, just wake me up whenever your Escort comes to get you and spritz you with that awful potpourri shit. I'll try and talk her into good old-fashioned Febreze."
He gathers the quilt up in his arms and kicks his shoes off (he doesn't know R's sense of organization, but expects that as the sneakers are temporary guests, them sitting out of place won't be too much of an eyesore). He used to sleep sprawled out, but in the last few years he's started curling, fetal-style, as if protecting his precious innards, as if his spine was bending in the same direction as his stomach when it increased its concavity.
"Goodnight, Rob." He lays down, unsure if he's going to sleep when he closes his eyes or just lie there waiting for a blissful nothing that never seems to come. That R could eat him, could find a way out of his muzzle, maybe, occurs to him, but doesn't actually impact a single braincell. "See you in the morning."