if life made any sense, you'd pack your bags and leave

[bangbangkerpooow]

Who| Billy, Tom, and Molotov
What| Billy joins the "pissed off at Tom" club. Membership: 32482924 gazillion.
Where| The training room
When| After the kiddy arena
Warnings/Notes| Violence and stuff.

Billy decorates a dummy with his throwing knives. One for the left eye. One for the right eye. Three for the smile. His throwing accuracy hasn't suffered since his days as a Tribute -- he wouldn't let it suffer -- and so it's only when he's aiming for the nose that things get difficult. The dummy's head bows under the weight of the five knives. The blade intended for the nose clangs, clatters against one of the eye knives and falls to the ground, embedding itself in the dummy's foot.

"Hey buddy," he says, biting down on his lip and his frustration all at once. He saunters towards the dummy, bows down, and scoops the knife out of the foam. He twirls it once. Twice. "You're not looking so hot."

He leans forward and places the knife in the dummy's face almost gingerly, like a child putting a carrot into a snowman.

"There we go. Might as well go out in style, yeah?"

This entire scene is not unusual for him.

Comments

[pimpcanes]

"Talking with someone you can best in an argument, Mr. Bickle?"

Since being snubbed earlier, Tom's been looking for a reason to come across District Two's most childish Mentor and make him regret turning down the chance at a collaboration. Normally he might concoct some sort of plan for how to place the needles to the weakest parts of someone's psyche, or at least their bank accounts, but Billy's made it easy to antagonize him.

They're not too far different from each other, and Tom finds that wholly detestable. It's not from any part of self-hatred; it's just that that level of self-absorption demands eclipsing everyone else's. One's pettiness must eclipse the others. The same poles of a magnet repel each other.

Tom doesn't come to the training center all that often, choosing instead to do most of his exercise in his room where other Tributes won't bother him. When he does appear, it's only because he wants to refresh his memory for weapons. Today, it's an axe.

He sets his cane aside and takes off his jacket, showing that he's still well-built for someone who mostly wears slimming long coats, and hoists the axe in one hand, turning it over in his palm and checking the edge.

[bangbangkerpooow]

Billy rarely decides to commit physical violence. It is his one flaw -- or rather, one of his flaws. Aggression tends to build up in his veins like tiny pinpricks of electricity, and then ZAP. The world would close in on him like a camera shutter. When he'd come to, his fists would be bruised and he would have a strange taste in his mouth, something like adrenaline given form.

Buzz buzz, go the veins in his hand when he sees Tom. He flexes his fingers.

Washed up. Tom had called him washed up. Six months ago, he would have laughed at the insult, gawked at its simple absurdity. Him? Washed up? But now the world is ending, and there are the people who take action (eva) and then there are the people that stand around with their dicks in their hand. Billy trains with muscles he'll never use for a moment that will never come. Which one is he?

('Baby Billy can dish it out, but can't take it!' chant the other Careers as they circle around Billy's fallen form, but what they don't know is that Billy never takes anything.)

The world closes in on him like a camera shutter. He does not think of the axe. He does not think of anything.

Before Billy knows it, he's throwing a punch at Black Tom Cassidy.

[molotov]

It's easy enough to overlook Molotov, if you aren't looking at the other side of the gym. She's just coming off the Gauntlet, having seen Tom come in, and paused only to towel off and take a drink of water. It's in that moment that Billy's arm flies forward, and she can feel herself flicker away from the real world and into the one where only the fight exists, a world she used to live nearly daily. It's been too long since she's been here, since the last Arena, and it feels like a warm hug to come back, even if it's only sparked by the need to put down the dog who dares swing at Tom.

How dare anyone else try to hurt him? Tom is hers, hers to hurt or heal or do as she pleases with. No one else has the right.

She is across the floor before she knows it, only a few strobe light flashes of consciousness before she is in the air, one leg over the other in a butterfly kick aimed at this unknown's neck. Her heels click against the floor viciously (yes, she wears stilettos to work out, don't question it) when she lands, and though she is panting, she doesn't catch her breath before gnashing her teeth and yelling furiously.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

[pimpcanes]

It catches Tom off-guard, and thus it catches him hard. The first thing he's even aware of is the taste of blood, the sting of his tongue clipped between his teeth, his eye watering as he yields a step back. Pieces of the situation fall into his head in scattered, arbitrary order, incomplete as mad-libs, articulated through combat instinct. punched me evenly matched Billy hell what in hell hit back hit BACK

He keeps his wits together enough to not use the head of the axe, nor to discard the weapon. He can see blood spilling in his fantasies, a few seconds in the future, a quick decision taken the other way. They could end this both in pieces on a mat made slickery with their innards.

But he is just slightly too possessed for that. He thrusts the butt of the handle at Billy's stomach, but by then Billy's down, and the entire question is moot.

He backs off and rubs his cheekbone.

"Careful, Molotov, dear. Wouldn't want to bruise his ego any further. It's sensitive." He sneers, and his teeth are bloody.

[bangbangkerpooow]

After his punch connects with Tom's face, after he feels the other man's teeth through cheek, it's like all of his anger dissipates. Poof. Billy might as well be on a tropical beach right now, the water rolling over his naked toes, the sunlight bright on his face. It's a perverse sort of zen, this meditative state that emerges only after violence. It's where Billy belongs.

And then Molotov's kick connects with his neck and he crumples, coughing and choking, his hands automatically grasping at his throat.

"The neck?!"

His words are practically inaudible through the choking. He kicks at the ground, creating bursts of punctuation with his thump, thump, thumps. He tries once again, louder.

"The fucking neck?!"

[molotov]

By the time Billy's able to speak even sort of clearly, Molotov is at Tom's side, looking at his cheek, running her fingers over the rising bruise there, all gentle concern until she looks over her shoulder to snap furiously at the body on the ground.

"Yeah, the fucking neck," she barks. "If you didn't want to get kicked in the neck, you shouldn't go around sucker punching people who didn't do anything. Now shut up until you have an apology ready and you want to lick my boots like the street dog you are."

She scowls and turns away from him again to return to her selfish mollycoddling. It gnaws at her that someone else dared touch him. "You want some ice?"

[pimpcanes]

"I'm fine." It'll make for a nasty bruise, but in a way Tom prefers that. To wander around somewhat beat-up and none-the-more cowed projects a sort of confidence, an unspoken "yeah, but you should see the other guy". And while he appreciates Molotov's rescue, it's true that it's somewhat emasculating.

He takes her fingers from the bruise and holds her hand, kisses her knuckles, reassuring her and pleased at every chance he has to touch that perfect body, that fine china skin.

Then back to Billy. "My boots could use a polish too, actually."

Yes, he's enjoying this.