thecapitol | look up in the mirror the mirror look at me (open)

Entry tags:

look up in the mirror the mirror look at me (open)

Who| Calendius Rey and open!
What| 3 prompts
Where| District 2 Suite, Training Center, around the Capitol
When| Various points in the day. See the prompts please.
Warnings/Notes| Well. Cal is vapid as hell so that will probably be a thing.

(( 1; District 2 Suites, before dawn ))

To say that Calendius rose with the sun would be an understatement. While he could be prone to bouts of sloth and profound lethargy, they rarely took when he had a project and District 2 was a project, to say the least. So no, there was no time to sleep in, no time to rise languidly, soak in the tub and abscond away to brunch with Apollonia, Adrastea, and her flavor of the month.

No, instead 6am found Calendius awake and in the District 2 kitchen, already preparing a savory (and conspicuously low-fat) breakfast for his beloved team. Perhaps this could serve as a peace offering of sorts. He could extend an olive branch. Or an olive egg white omelet with vegan cheese, as it were.

(( 2; Training Center, midday ))

In the gym, Cal focused as he never focused elsewhere. His precision was uncanny and actually, a little bit unnerving. IT was as if he was competing with some unknown, unseen, all powerful and all consuming force that could only be vanquished by one more rotation, one more spin session. He moves restlessly from machine to machine. He pumped iron, jumped rope, practiced yoga to warm up and cool down, and did lunges in between. Never did he appear to tire, or seem to do much more than break a sweat. Which was the point, of course.

At least it was an attractive sweat.

(( 3; Streets around the Capitol, evening ))

Watches could (and were) set by Calendius' evening jog. Everyday at 4:30pm, he left the front steps of the Tribute Center with his neon pink water bottle firmly in hand. By 4:37pm he was on the steps of the National Library. By 4:42pm, he had jogged passed the Speakeasy and was his way back home. The half hour gave him much needed time to relax and reflect on the day. The scenery of the Capitol, his beloved home, made for a pleasant background. In the half an hour of his job, Calendius came as close to zen as perhaps any living being could. It was truly an enlightening experience.

Or maybe that was the endorphin-high talking. It was cool either way.

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It's not Gary's plan to run into Calendius on his rounds of the Capitol, but Gary certainly isn't adverse to finding him. He recognizes that face from anywhere--this is the hardass trainer that's been giving District 2 so much grief, isn't it? Of course he'd be out jogging. As soon as Gary lays eyes on him, he decides that he's got to meet this guy, if for no other reason than to give him a run for his money.

Calendius will find his zen broken by a chipper-looking teenager, jogging quickly up to his side with a wide, oblivious grin plastered to his face. "Heya!" He offers a friendly wave. "You're, uh...that escort, right?"

The question is just barely enough to lurch him from the thin grasp on athletic bliss he'd been seconds away from attaining. He wrinkles his nose and a sneer creeps across Cal's perfect jaw (made better by modern science), but it's ghostly and vanishes a split second later. By the time he turns to actually give Gary a once over, there's a guarded but nonetheless charming smile in its place.

"Calendius Rey, District Two." His teeth are white. Almost too white. His voice is full and chipper. "And you're Gary Epps of Eleven."

Calendius doesn't slow his pace at all. If this kid wants to chat, he can keep up.

Gary can and does keep up, with apparently no effort paid. The child is not many things--he's not very patient, not very smart, not too perceptive--but if nothing else, he is quite fit and deceptively agile. In thinking that he wants to give Cal a 'run for his money,' Gary probably means that literally. Sizing him up, Gary decides he can take him on.

"You got me!" He throws his hands up and offers a casual chuckle. "Nice to meet you, mister Calendius Rey." That's going to get clunky rather quickly. Gotta find a way to shorten it. "Just wanted to see what a guy like you gets up to, you know? See the regimen behind the success and all that."

The boy moves quick, Cal will give him that. Not happily, but he does have a sense of allowing credit where credit is due. This is just the cool down. I would tell you to find me in the morning sometime, but the real regimen is a trade secret." He smiles, it's very white and there are a lot of teeth. "Gotta look out for my team." Whether they like it or not, honestly. Odds are, they won't.

Cal rounds a corner with little to no warning. It's a pretty impressive display of agility. "How are you liking Panem. And Cal is fine."

Gary doesn't expect the turn, but he's quick enough that he can follow, practically on instinct, taking the inner corner with a light hop to his step. It's a subtle, unintentional challenge. Gary's happy enough to have someone that he actually has to try to keep up with.

"Cal," he repeats. That's much easier! "It's fine here! Always stuff to do. I don't know why everyone complains so much about it." Whoops, maybe he shouldn't have said that. Oh well. "--Yeah, I've seen your Tributes! They're uh--" He pauses to hop a bench that's in his path. "--they're something!"

Days like these were why manicures were invented. No one understood the pressure she was under, and without Arturas around to confide in, Jennifer was simply destroying her nails. Clearly an intervention was needed. She had just exited her favorite nail salon at about 4:44 and was preparing to take a long, quiet stroll by herself when out of the blue, a mockingjay dove right at her face. She let out a sharp scream and ducked to the cement, trying to protect herself from the seemingly deranged bird.

"Ahh! Help! Get it off!"

4:45pm found Calendius, shockingly, swatting at a the mockingjay which had begun imitating Jennifer's shrill cries. He hadn't intended to rescue his boss, it had simply seemed the polite and gentlemanly thing to do. However, upon seeing the identity of the woman whose aid he'd rushed to, Cal wasn't disappointed in the slightest. Their rocky start notwithstanding, Jenny was a classy woman. And her cuticles looked great. She must have just come from a salon (or had an excellent vitamin enriched hand lotion regimen).

It took a few swats and a yell (which the bird shot back at him, mockingly), but eventually the feathered assailant peeled away, shrieking as it went. In the rush to her defense, Calendius had wrapped a lanky arm protectively around Jennifer's shoulders. He backed off to a polite distance once the bird was visibly on the retreat.

"Jenny, are you alright? Your nails look great, by the way. Nice cuticles."

From it's perch in a nearby tree, the mockingjay screeched back at them, mimicking the pitch of Jenny's shaken sobs. She was disheveled, a complete mess, shaking as she grabbed onto Cal's arms to steady herself. How absolutely embarrassing. She could feel her cheeks burning from indignity and rage.

"I don't... I don't know what just happened. I've never known birds to act that way." Her voice cracked slightly, in a most unbecoming way, so she cleared her throat as she tried to rearrange herself. She hated looking a mess, especially in front of someone she had to deal with on the reg. Speaking of which...

"What are you doing here anyway? How did you find me?" Of all the people in Panem, why Calendius Rey?

Because, of all the people in Panem, only Calendius Rey was that meticulous about his jogging routine.

He let her grab onto his arm as much as needed, keeping just within reaching distance should the offending bird decide to swoop back around and attack them again. It squawked obnoxiously at them from the tree as she talked, and on more than one screech, Cal glanced up at it reproachfully, as if the mockingjay would somehow realize its error and amend its behavior.

"Mockingjays. They copy sounds, or something. Crito explained it to me once, and they're pretty popular in Arenas."He offered some resistance as she leaned, holding her as steady as possible while gesturing vaguely to his windbreaker and running shoes. "I was out for a jog when I heard someone yell. I didn't realize it was you at all until I got over here and chased the bird away. You're okay now? I don't think it would come back, but you never know, and I'll be real, they kind of freak me out."

What was that bird doing in the Capitol? And why would it attack her like that? Oh, well. She wouldn't worry about that too much, so long as it stayed at a safe distance and she got indoors in a timely manner. The whole thing made her nervous, and while she was grateful for Cal's intervention, she still found the whole thing surreal.

"Yes, yes. I'm alright, I think." Jennifer reached up to touch her hairline where the bird had made contact, gasping in horror at the sight of blood on her fingertips. Now it was her chance to drift toward hysterics as she flailed around looking for something to cover small, bleeding scratch on her scalp. "It scratched me! I'm bleeding! That thing made me bleed! Oh my god what if I get infected with something?"

So much for calm, collected Jenny. When faced with the possibility of an avian-borne illness, Jennifer Blackwood could flip out at the drop of a hat.

Unfortunately, Cal had left most of his belongings scattered between Adrastea's flat and the District Two suite. This left him shockingly ill-prepared to deal with a bleeding superior currently devolving into hysterics on the street.

"We should get you inside. The Tribute Center is only about a mile from here. They'd have medical supplies and we can get you patched up." He again put an arm around her, albeit more awkwardly. Without the urgency of an impending bird attack, he had enough time to calculate exactly how inappropriate or unwelcome the advance might be. Oh well, it was probably better to be rebuffed for offering comfort than to let her bleed out without even offering a hug. Cal leaned into the embrace, using his height advantage to check the scratch on her scalp. It didn't look bad, but then again, it did mar what was otherwise perfection. Stupid bird. "I know first aid. You'll be fine. Do you want to borrow my hat while we walk?"

Jennifer wasn't exactly alleviated of her worries, but she could at least try to take some comfort in his attempts at being chivalrous. She accepted his hat thankfully and let him put it on her head to cover the wound, not even caring that it looked utterly ridiculous on her and completely clashed with her lime green ensemble. His heart was in the right place, for once in his life, and she knew it.

Her lashes fluttered a little, some of the glue having become dislodged from her upper lid. She looked, and felt like a wreck, and it was embarrassing to be seen like this by Cal. She was sure that she'd never live it down, now that her efforts at a perfect illusion had been thoroughly shattered. At least there didn't seem to be any photographers around.

She shivered slightly, but didn't shake off Calendius' arm. She wasn't uncomfortable, she just wanted to get going, and fast. "Yes, let's get out of here before that horrible creature decides to come back for another round."

Jennifer decided, right then and there, that she hated all songbirds.

Cal rather liked songbirds. On days when he forgot his headphones, they made jogs pleasant in a back-to-nature kind of way. He wasn't going to start hating them yet.

"Okay. Away we go." Nevertheless, he could kind of understand her reasoning. He led her back in the direction from which he'd come. There were relatively few trees lining the sidewalk. That would probably be at least a small comfort.

It was slow going walking instead of jogging. At that moment, Calendius made up his mind to have a light dinner. The loss of cardio was problematic.

"How was your day, Jenny? Good, I hope. Apart from the bird-attack." His hat looked ridiculous on her, and her eyelash was drooping asymmetrically, the same way Adrastea's toward the end of parties when she'd overindulged. The similarity was both pleasant and distressing on some very basic level.

While she didn't much care for smalltalk, Jenny realized what he was trying to do by distracting her. If she kept her mind off the mockingjays at least she could try walking in peace.

"It was fine, I suppose," she answered noncommittally. She hadn't heard from her husband in several days, which either meant things were fine or meant that there was some horrible catastrophe in District 10 or wherever it was he was visiting this month. If she'd felt closer to Cal, she might've confided her loneliness to him, but alas, this was her cross to bear and her's alone. "Some of the escorts have been slacking lately. I've been covering for them in terms of seeking out sponsorship deals for individual Tributes. It's all very exhausting."

And probably boring, too. Cal didn't need to listen to her vent about work. Work was work, and while she enjoyed it and really poured herself into it, she understood that she had a higher work ethic than most anyone else she knew. The jury was still out on him, though he'd started to surprise her lately.

She flicked her gaze at him, meeting his eyes for just a moment before returning to stare at the unfolding path ahead. The sun was setting, the colors getting hazy in the winter sky. It might almost be considered picturesque or romantic, if not for the intervening details of the situation. At least the colors were pleasant.

"Hmm." She smiled, looking up at the orangish clouds in the west. "What a lovely night. Too bad it's so cold."

"Yep. Too bad." He didn't register the colors as much as she probably had. They were nice, but they met a certain arbitrary criteria regarded by Cal as required for a 'nice' evening. After the proverbial box had been checked off, they were disregarded in favor anything else that might carry his attention. Generally, that meant pursuing his routine. Calendius could very easily recognize that he was, after a fashion, a creature of habit. Healthy people keep routines. Bodies function better with routines.

"I'd offer my jacket, too," he said after letting her revel in the moment for what seemed a suitable amount of time. "But I was out on a run and it's probably a little bit gross by now."

That was mostly because it was his third run of the day and he only kept so many spare clothes in the District 2 Suite, but she didn't need to know that. Even if he couldn't appreciate the colors of the sunset, he was very aware that he had somehow chanced into a stroll with the closest thing he had to a boss. Cal was used to being impressive, impassive, the image of a cool competitor. He had to be impressive here. "Running helps me think. It's a good way to end a day, you know?"

She was always thinking, always considering things. She didn't need running as an outlet, but she didn't judge Cal for it. It took all kinds to make the world function as it needed to, and sometimes what a situation called for was a man like him. He was helping her now, wasn't he?

"Sure." She said, not exactly committing to the sentiments he'd shared. "It's important to clear your head. I usually take a nice long bath in the evenings. I try not to think about anything for at least twenty minutes."

A gust of wind kicked up just then and she found she was shivering. She would have taken a closer step toward him, if he weren't covered in so much sweat. Come to think of it, he was probably chilly himself, from the winter wind and all. How kind of him to take her back inside and disrupt his routine. "I really do appreciate your assistance tonight." She smiled, a bit cheekily. "I'm not promising it will reflect in your performance review, but your chivalry certainly won't hurt you."

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