This is liquid love in a plastic cup

[confidentially]

Who| Jessica Wakefield & Buddy Glass
What| So a Mentor and a Peacekeeper walk into a bar...
Where| An old fashioned sort of joint where they don't ask questions.
When| Backdated to mid-Arena.
Warnings/Notes| Talk about sex, death, and alcoholism.

Jessica couldn't blame this lapse of judgement on her drinking. She wasn't sober, she was rarely completely sober, but she was in a decent mindset and she was thinking clearly when she arrived at the bar Buddy Glass had specified at the time he'd picked. She shouldn't have called him out. She shouldn't have said a word to him at all. But a little voice in the back of her head told her to reach out. It said, quite insistently, that having the head of the Peacekeepers in her back pocket was just about the smartest move she could make, not just for her, but for her Tributes, too. That little voice was telling her to forget that she was in love with someone else. It told her to forget all about making love to Dale Barbara. It told her to do what she'd been doing for years, to do the only thing she was really any good at.

Her golden hair was styled in thick, loose curls which fell at her bare shoulders. Her dress was dark red, vibrant against the golden tan of her skin, with a slit up the side that seemed almost obscenely high. She was a painted vision against the almost seedy backdrop of the bar, but she didn't seem to mind. Jessica was a drinker. She could navigate amongst her peers with ease, so while she really did look too pretty and too young to be in a place like that, she didn't let on. Instead, she ordered her preferred potable and leaned in close as Buddy Glass sat down across from her at their semi-secluded table.

"So what made you join the Peacekeepers anyway?" She asked, bringing the shot glass to her lips. Her make-up left a red outline on the rim of the glass. "You strike me as like... an intellectual or something. You're not like those thick headed jerks with the guns they've got patrolling the streets back home." Perhaps she should've been a bit more guarded, talking like that. But that voice in her head was insistent: she'd be safe with him. She could rely on her charm awhile longer, anyway.

Comments

[parenthetically]

It didn't take a trained eye to see that she wasn't quite on the level, both in terms of sobriety and earnestness. But it was all more or less the same. In the last twenty-four hours Buddy had gone from irksome nobody stashed away in some cubical under the presumption of his impending mental breakdown to ostensibly one of the most powerful men in all of Panem. After consulting what was left of Seymour, a few undoubtedly esoteric texts, Franny's sobs and Zooey's condescending disapproval, Buddy had decided that he was damn well done analyzing the events as they were to unfold. As such, when Jessica Wakefield (of all people) had so publicly (and that he was more or less certain had been intentional), called him out, he felt a rebellious sense of obligation to stop thinking and go for it. Whatever it was to be in this case.

If all else failed, he would have something with which to counter Zooey's condescension. Brutishly fraternal though it might be.

"I wanted to be a novelist, actually. But you know how it goes in Panem. No one can have what they want, so they settled for what will keep them from being hassled." He skipped mention of Seymour's adolescent rush of patriotism and his own blind subornation to it. The reasons behind his decision seemed equal parts unimpressive and uninteresting in comparison to what had befallen him (them) since then.

[confidentially]

That explained a lot about Buddy, Jessica decided. He really wasn't like those ultra-violent assholes who took joy in terrorizing the people in the Districts. She still didn't get why he would join up with them, since he seemed like a halfway decent human being, but then again, if she knew one thing about the people of Panem it was that looks could be deceiving.

"I wanted to be a dancer," she said, smiling wistfully. "But you can see how well that turned out. Hm, well. I bet your family is really proud of you at least." Hers wasn't, and now they were all dead.

[parenthetically]

"We both ended up getting halfway there, in a roundabout sort of way." He figured he'd seen her dance on one occasion or another, usually at the behest of an escort, or due to some filming contract. Similarly, he'd written enough fiction pursuant to his job to fill several very interesting and highly disturbing novels. Fade rounded things out such that, through the right lens and mildly entertained delusion, the glass could always be made to seem half-full.

"My parents were both theatre people. They'd probably think higher of me if I wasn't letting my talent squander in some brick and metal cage, but after a certain age I got tired of being the center of attention." It had been easier to pull out, too, Buddy realized, when only his teenage voice had been known. Had he lasted much longer in the entertainment industry, an abrupt exist wouldn't have been any more an option for him than it was for her. Panem didn't cut its entertainers loose without a substantial fight, even those who had never claimed to any gladiator prize. "Which is why I'm a little unsettled as to what's happening now. I keep waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under me and tell everybody that this is an exceptionally elaborate prank."

[confidentially]

She wasn't sure if she could believe it, that deep down inside Buddy didn't relish the attention he was getting. But maybe that was her own personality seeping out. She basked in the glow, it was easy to assume everyone else did too. "I'm sure you'll get used to it. I mean, it's not like you really have a choice, anyhow. You're the Capitol's golden boy now. It's not as if you can backtrack or find a way off this roller coaster. You're in too deep."

Her smile was slightly off, not sinister, but not exactly kind. It could easily be blamed on the liquor, but there was a certain scheming quality to her expression just then.