thecapitol | We Get Older [Closed]

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We Get Older [Closed]

WHO| Punchy and Carlos, Punchy and Dave, Punchy and Gary
WHAT| Post-Arena condolences.
WHERE| Lobby of the Tribute Center.
WHEN| After the children's Arena.
WARNINGS| None yet aside from your typical juvenile murder games fare.

Tonight, it occurs to him that he's actually going to age. Physically, not just carrying extra years in his soul like an invisible tick, bloating itself on his years in Panem. His body's going to be allowed to slouch and swagger into its twenties, rather than stuck permanently at eighteen.

The freedom from the Arena, and the cage of life as a Victor, hasn't hit him like a sack of bricks. It's just revealed itself in details that blindside him as each day goes by.

He keeps coming home half an hour before curfew, irate that he isn't able to drown out his woes in public revelry. He wants to go to bars and gets wasted and feel up the cute girls who throw themselves at the new Victor. He wants to paste over the feeling of a chasm yawning beneath him with confetti and alcohol and g-strings. Sometimes he gets a little bit into it before the alarm comes, and he stumbles back to the Suite intoxicated, but usually he feels as if grieving for the person he's supposed to be has been painfully truncated every night.

He's going to age. He's going to get old here in the Capitol while everyone he cares about dies in the Arena or rots in the ground. He's so excited he could cry.

Tonight he's sober when he gets back to the Tribute Center, carrying a box of trinkets under his puffy jacket. The soon-winter air outside has flushed his cheeks and the tip of his nose rosy. He glances at the still-erected statue of the naked Enjolras and frowns at it, unsure if it's out of relief that he didn't suffer the same fate or out of envy that he didn't get a nude statue.

It's totally envy.

He flops down on a couch and rubs his hands together, reminding himself to buy mittens tomorrow. He won't use the Avoxes to run that errand. This one's on him.

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What isn't known isn't worried about! "Sure thing!" Gary trots over to the bar and leans confidently over the counter, slaps it to get the bartender's attention and holds up three fingers with a wink. The bartender, of course, has no idea what he's on about. Gary repeats the gesture with more insistence. The bartender gives up and starts preparing three cheap, although still quite fancy-looking, fruit-themed beverages.

There's time for some casual conversation while they wait. "Let's throw you a proper celebration, eh?" Gary hops onto one of the stools and perches there, resting heavy on his elbows. "Some nerve those Gamemakers have, not throwing you one! What's their problem?"

"Them bitches know they can't fit all that phatness into one night's what." Punchy shrugs it off. The truth is that he can't imagine anything he'd rather do less than be more celebrated for his victory, the one he slithered to the finish line on over the bodies of children, over his friends, over people who actually wanted this freedom.

He takes two of the drinks for himself and leaves one for Gary. Whoops, hope that's how you intended to divide them, G. He also knocks on the counter and yells "shots!".

"Maybe I'll just throw a little shindig with my closest peeps. No CapitolKart this time, though."

Gary takes no notice, if only because he'll probably end up sneaking sips of Punchy's extra drink while they're distracted with conversation. "Aw, no CapitolKart?" he pouts, pausing to knock back his colorful cocktail and take several long gulps. "I can always get more controllers, man! It's no problem!"

"Ain't about that. It's about keeping the aggro out of our chill time, you dig?" Punchy's not possessive enough of his drinks to notice when Gary sneaks a sip. "You already had problems getting hype in the Arena, dawg."

He raises his eyebrows. "I ain't holding it against, though. We all did shit that Arena."

Gary is about to crack a joke about how broken controllers are all part of the natural process of CapitolKart and shouldn't be repressed, but then Punchy brings up the Arena. It was inevitable, really, considering that Gary's been avoiding it this entire time. His face falls behind the rim of his drink.

"Ah...thanks, man." Gary's brow furrows with anxiety. He can't just leave it there--feels too awkward. Addressing it feels awkward, too. At least Punchy took the bullet there instead of him. "I, um--you know I wouldn't have done that shit if I'd meant it, right?"

"I know." He kicks back the entire drink. He's developing something of a high tolerance, even if the way alcohol always makes his face flush would suggest otherwise. "Figured it was in the water once you started drinking it and getting all way turnt."

He just shakes his head a bit. "Since you's going back in there, you gotta be careful about the chow. Sorry I didn't warn you ahead of time."

A more sensible person would have recognized that now is a time for Serious Talk, and that quietly chanting "chug, chug" under their breath while Punchy downed the rest of his drink isn't very appropriate. Gary is not that person. He at least has the sense to sober up when that's over with, though.

"'S kay," Gary nods. "They can't make it all bad, you know? I'll figure something out."

There's a pause as he takes a long, thoughtful sip of his drink, and everything that Punchy just said takes its time to register. Gary's eyes widen.

"--Wait, wait. You're done?"

"I won." If there's ever been a more despondent way to say those words, it hasn't been recorded. It's been lost to the annals of history. Punchy tries to wrest his face under control, into the picture of casual cockiness, even as the sorrow in his voice belies it. "Now I just kick back and watch."

He reaches over and takes the second drink, the one Gary's been kiping from. And he throws that one back too and knocks on the bar for another.

"So I'mma be making it rain for my homies in the Arenas. That's what I can do for you."

Gary frowns and his brow furrows. It's actually, finally starting to click with him that Punchy winning isn't such a good thing. He isn't sure why it isn't, apart from not getting to spend time with his best bro in the Arenas anymore--and even then, Gary's starting to wonder if that's something he should be looking forward to--but that expression was hard to miss. Which, coming from a guy like Gary, is saying something.

"Hey, man, don't worry about it," he assures almost on reflex, and afterwards finds himself grappling for a reason to back it up. Gary gestures helplessly as Punchy consumes the second drink. "I'll be giving you shout-outs, alright? Then we can hang out all the time after I win."

"You better ace this, Gary. I'mma go nuts if it's just me and Kevin and Wesker kicking it back here during the Arenas." Punchy pulls a face that's as sad as it is intentionally comical. The truth is, most of his friends are dead, and those that aren't are all in the Arena or far, far away. The next few weeks will be a trial in isolation for him, along with the crushing guilt of everything that's happened to him, everything he participated in.

He calls for a third drink, not caring about how dangerously fast he's drinking them. After a second's pause he decides to get some peanuts too, and he crams a handful in his mouth.

"I'mma do my best to keep you flush, but I been having the Capitol breathing down my neck since I broke their network a year back or so. Maybe more." Time becomes hard to tell, in and out of the Arenas and as perpetually intoxicated as Punchy's been lately.

There's several opportunities for distraction here, the first of which Gary immediately hops on. "Maybe you can get that asshole Wesker to smile for once, eh? He could use it before his face gets stuck like it is."

That seems like an appropriate place to stop, chuckle, and drain the rest of his drink, since Punchy is being alarmingly forward in the alcohol department and Gary doesn't want to get left behind. He, too, smacks the table for a refill and reaches his free hand for the peanuts. It's about this point that he catches the second opportunity for distraction. This one is less pleasant.

"You what?" Gary's eyes widen with surprise before his mouth quirks into a wide, mischievous grin. "Damn, dude, I didn't know you could hack! I mean--the whole network? Holy shit! How?"

"I ain't telling you how, weeble. That's like, antithesis to my master plans for you." Which are, to say, keeping Gary safe from all this nonsense. It's not that Gary's special in any way, but Punchy's got him under his wing, even if Gary sees himself as at his side as an equal.

Still, Punchy steeples his fingers as he waits for the bartender to bring him his fourth drink, as if he was joking about master plans and not semi-serious. He makes a little gesture at the bartender, a flat hand drawn across his throat, while making eye contact with the keep and then glancing at Gary. Don't give him that much, Punchy says without words.

"Anyway, Wesker's got a face like a bunghole, preach. Always this expression." Punchy puckers her mouth a bit and looks Very Serious. Then he pulls his hand over his face like he's wearing shades.

Punchy's method of literally throwing shade not only gets Gary laughing, but also distracts him from the subtle gesture and consequent lack of drink in the glass he's given. He chugs it and feels pretty satisfied with himself afterwards.

Unfortunately, this does not get him to drop the subject of hacking. If it's a joke, then it's worth joking more about, right? "Ah, I see how it is," Gary grins and leans forward, offering an exaggerated wink. "Undercover and all that shit. I got ya. Maybe you can tell me over your super secret hacked fucking spy watch or whatever, eh?"

"My super secret hacked fucking spy watch is two-way. You'd have to have one too. But dawg, for reals." Another knock on the damn bar. Punchy wants to be in oblivion before midnight. "I had these goggles before I came here, night-vision, that were off the fucking chain. I'd be giving my left nut for that shit."

He doesn't toss this drink back, letting the more recent one settle. When he looks at Gary he's serious again, almost stern.

"Don't get into hacking here, dawg. Playah's advice, you know?"

Gary holds up his hands in silent submission. "Hey, no problem! Hacking's not my scene. Save it for the pros, right?"

He leans forward to give his friend a playful punch in the shoulder, but it's a ruse--an excuse to close the distance so he can whisper under the ambient noise of the commons and Punchy can still hear him.

"But I know how to get shit back that doesn't belong to me. That's my scene." A beat, where Gary waits for Punchy to acknowledge while he rapidly twitches his eyebrows. "I bet the Peacekeepers have something like those goggles. That Murphy guy, I know he's gotta have something going on in that visor. Just say the word, man. I can help a brother out."

Edited (bluh proper names) 2015-03-10 02:13 (UTC)

"Shit yeah, save it for the mavens." It's a word Punchy's only recently learned, and he's very proud of it.

Maybe if he weren't already drunk, Punchy would think better of encouraging Gary to steal from the Panem police - in his current state, however, he seems to be incapable of seeing anything but the mistakes he's made personally as bad decisions for his buddy. He leans in, watching Gary twitch his eyebrows with a sort of envy that he himself doesn't have that much facial control.

And in his inebriated state, his whisper is anything but discrete.

"You offering to boost something for me?"

Mavens. What a good word! Gary nods enthusiastically and stores that one away for later.

"Maybe." Punchy isn't doing much to keep his voice down, so Gary takes things up a notch to match. But he also has the sense to recognize that some discretion is needed here; Gary has seen one public execution too many to know to be careful about spreading dangerous information. Acting on it, though, seems to have brought him much less severe results. He can handle that, Gary tells himself. "If I possibly knew where to look and hypothetically knew where to take it, I could theoretically boost some neat shit for some people that I don't know anything about. 'Cause we're the good guys. Right?"

The mischievous glint in Gary's eye says that, in fact, he has no intention of being a good guy.

Punchy misses the mischievous glint; out of naivete, perhaps, he truly believes that he could never be betrayed, that everyone he makes a positive snap judgment on is a good person. Seven Arenas haven't changed that; no one's made good on his lack of caution, his gullibility, his youthfulness.

So it's with complete conviction that he addresses Gary. "Church, son. We's the upside gangstas here. Gimme a few days and I'mma get you the blues for whatever shit you wanna jank."

Thankfully for Punchy, Gary has no intention of backing down from this plan. Partners in crime, he thinks--it'll be fun, this game, and in the end he'll be able to give his friend something nice. Gary has no idea how he'll get there, but he's invested in getting it done as soon as the chance arises.

This is especially reinforced with how stalwart Punchy is about the whole thing. "Alright," Gary grins wide and raises his glass in an impromptu toast. "That's what I'm talkin' about! Whatever you need, man."

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We Get Older [Closed]

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i laughed at chug, chug

very good

Re: very good

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I think this is a good place to wrap this up!