[OPEN] ain't no party like a D̴̡̀R̶̵̶A̷̵̡̛͜G̷͟ ̀҉̸̀͢Q͝҉͟͏U҉͘͟͜͡Ȩ͜҉͞E̷͢Ņ ̷̷̕Ṕ̷̧̛͞A̷͟R̸̛̕Ţ̀́Y̵̴

[fuckingcool]

Who| Oceana Gunn and all you party people
What| Oceana's throwing the craziest party of the year to celebrate the end of the Arena, and you're invited. Feel free to mingle, post open starters, and tag around to your heart's content!
Where| Her bachelor(ette) pad in the Capitol
When| Post-Arena, pre-Crowning
Warnings/Notes| Uhhh. Drugs, alcohol, sex, language, etc are all possibilities within!



It's high time that someone threw a really great party in this town.

Oceana's been laying low, working on costumes for the upcoming Crowning and watching her babies kick ass in the Arena, but after a while she gets an itch. An itch to invite hundreds of strangers to her penthouse apartment, dress up in her most sickening clothes, and let the booze pour. So that's exactly what she does. Invitations are sent out, crates of liquor are ordered, food is catered in, and the lights are dimmed way down low.

Her apartment is spacious, minimally decorated because it looks fucking cool and she's barely around anyway, and full of dark corners. The living room has a huge table full of finger foods along one wall, a champagne fountain, and a full bar with virtually endless liquor. The music is loud as hell, and the drag queen has even gone to the trouble of paying people to come early and dance, so that the dance floor is never empty.

The hostess herself will be mingling all evening; the glass of vodka in her hand is never empty, and always garnished with at least six olives. She may not be the classiest bitch in the capitol, but it's apparent by looking around that she knows how to throw a killer soirée.

Comments

[capitolprivilege]

"Not having the best time, are you?"

Stephen glides up, no longer blacklisted and determined to enjoy the party as much as possible. After all, if tomorrow you die, it's best to eat, drink, and be merry, right? His eyes narrow at Jason playfully.

"You're here to work, aren't you."

lemme know if this is okay!

[whatisay]

The last time Jason saw Stephen in person, Stephen was a pre-teen and Jason's life was a train on a railroad towards comfort and luxury. The idea that he would be sharing a workplace in the Tribute Center with the spritely, wide-eyed, high-voiced twelve-year-old would have been ludicrous. Maybe Stephen would have shot high and ended up in a cabinet with his brother, and they would have worked together, but in the Tribute Center? Never.

The dissonance is enough to crash through his head like the note of a gong, enough to throw him off.

"What gave it away?" Jason doesn't expect an actual answer to that. He turns to Stephen with a smile that seems cramped at the corners. "So. Do you still go by Stevie or has that been left in the past?"

totally fine!

[capitolprivilege]

"I only get called that by the more gooey girlfriends," Stephen says with an easy laugh. He's drinking, yes, but he'd have to be a whole lot drunker to miss the tension in Jason's face and body. "God, it's been forever. And I mean forever -- more than ten years, right? Closer to fifteen. It's a shame we missed each other the last time you worked in the Games. You left before I began." It's casual, cheerful small talk, just about the only kind of talk you can safely have with an acquaintance you'd been out of touch with for that long.

[whatisay]

"Right? The last time I saw you, you were at least five inches shorter and would have blushed saying the word 'girlfriend' about anyone. And probably giggled at the word 'gooey'."

It's not as if he actively avoided the Reagans, but the party invitations stopped coming after Caddy's affair came into public eye. Jason never bothered to try and ingratiate himself with people who were afraid that the disreputatability was contagious.

And then Jason had seen an escape hatch in his dead-end Escort job and left, and here they are, over ten years later. One only slightly hampered by a now-removed cuff, the other all but shoved back into this field by circumstance.

"You're working with Six, aren't you?"

[capitolprivilege]

"That's right," Stephen says with a nod. "And I'd appreciate it if you kept the baby stories to a minimum around my Tributes. It's hard enough getting actual respect from them as it is. If Bro Strider hears the word Stevie, I guarantee you I'll never hear the end of it."

It's all very, very good-natured.

[whatisay]

"If that's the worst your Tributes do to you, you're doing fine. I'm having to sleep with one eye open and update the alarms on the house with the way mine act. You'd think we were the enemy here." He shakes his head, nodding a bit when an Avox finally brings him water (finally). "You shoot for actual respect, I'll keep my sights lowered to just basic decency."

Jason seems entirely unaware of how he feeds into this antagonism, as if he's completely blameless for how his charges react to him.

[capitolprivilege]

Stephen laughs when Jason says that bit about we were the enemy. It must be a laugh at how ridiculous the idea is. It must be. It certainly isn't an I can't believe you just said that seriously laugh.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Stephen says smoothly, keeping a light tone. "It's always difficult at the beginning. These Tributes need a different approach than the ones that came before. They're not frightened children, Jason."

[whatisay]

And since the idea is, of course, ridiculous, Jason takes that laugh at face value.

"Don't I know it. I'm learning that the hard way every day I show up there and see their little-" he waves his free hand- "pug faces whining. 'I don't want to do the photo shoot, Jason. Why can't people like me for who I am? Blah blah, I want my girlfriend in District Four to win.'"

Apparently, every Tribute Jason has has a grating nasal voice and an expression not unlike rat in the middle of being electrocuted.

"You got any favorites among yours?" He chews on the rind of the lemon peel, immune to the sourness or bitterness. "This fruit's good. District One must be getting a lot of sun this winter."

[capitolprivilege]

Stephen lets out a snort of laughter -- it's an unflattering caricature, but the sentiment is easy enough for him to understand.

"As in my favorites or the public's favorites?" Stephen asks. "Molotov Cocktease is a fan favorite, and I have to say, she's shown a lot of initiative when it comes to her own publicity. She's run a business before, and it shows. Working with her is both very easy and nearly impossible."

[whatisay]

"Your favorites. I could figure out the fan favorites from opening up my network device."

He smirks a little when he hears Stephen talk about Molotov, feeling a little less envy for Stephen having that Tribute than he did a few moments ago. Then again, perhaps it's for the best, as he would have a hard time not telling Molotov to put some damn clothes on; the Capitol is a fairly loose and free place, but Jason likes to think that respectable people still have some sense of decency.

"I guess she has one of those 'get out of way' approaches. Must make it easier to focus your attention on the others. Shame to hear about that Mentor you just got, Punches or whatever his name was. Someone else on staff might have been able to pick up some of the slack for you."

[capitolprivilege]

Stephen's face falls. "I'm going to miss Punchy," he says, with honest to god sadness. "He was weird, obnoxious, and played loud music almost constantly, but he had this energy to him that was honestly charming. I liked having him around a lot."

A moment of silence for a homie.

Then, Stephen remembers something, something important. "Speaking of Six's mentors, I need to warn you about Kevin."

[whatisay]

Jason fixes Stephen with a bit of a perplexed look, as if he can't quite imagine what it's like to enjoy having a Tribute around. The idea seems entirely foreign to him.

"You know we're not supposed to get attached to them, Stevie. That's practically the first rule in the Escort's Handbook." Not a written one, but a rule of law nonetheless. Jason feels no sympathy for Stephen's plight now, thinking that by weak constitution Stephen got himself into the trouble of grief.

"Oh? The one with the teeth and the Peacekeeping badge? Why?"

[capitolprivilege]

Stephen waves that off with a hand. He knows, he knows.

"Yeah. Just--try not to get near him if you can help it. When he came here, there was some very serious cultural misunderstanding, and while a lot of the big things have been worked through, I'm always just a little bit afraid that something's going to set him off."

He shakes his head.

[whatisay]

"Well, with a story like that I'm going to want to hear details." Jason folds his arms, as if settling in without sitting to hear this tale. "This sounds less like a cultural misunderstanding and more like an event."

And then his voice drops a bit. "Set him off, what, has he bitten someone?"

[capitolprivilege]

"He ate people his first Arena," says Stephen, matching Jason's undertone. "Killed other Tributes and ate them. The thing you have to understand is, his mind works in terms of efficiency and productivity. He thinks like a business. That's how he thinks of everything. So he thought it was efficient to eat other Tributes."

[whatisay]

"Well, it is efficient," Jason says, although his face contorts in disgust, as if this just proves further to him that Tributes aren't like Capitol Citizens. Those are the sorts of stories you hear about the Districts, the urban legends that the reporters of Panem aren't supposed to let reach the people nestled in the good city. "Disgusting, but efficient. He hasn't started putting garnish in the beds of any of his suitemates, has he?"

Jason laughs at his own joke, as if it's funny.

[capitolprivilege]

"Not yet, thank god," says Stephen, rolling his eyes but not laughing. "I think he's getting better. It's hard to tell behind that toothy grin. But for a while there, it was pretty rough.

"Do you have any problem children?" Stephen asks, turning the conversation to Jason and taking another drink.

[whatisay]

"I'd say I was surprised but what I say is you can't trust these off-worlders. Their cultures aren't like ours. They've got backwards ideas about things like table manners." Jason keeps smirking to himself, keeps veiled laughter in his mouth.

"Dorian Pavus, but he's your run of the mill problem child. If I didn't think he was going to get brought back, I'd just let him get killed at Cornucopia or die of exposure for all the backtalk I get from him."

[capitolprivilege]

Stephen keeps that drink up by his face, as though to smother laughter. He closes his eyes, raises his eyebrows, and good as says well, what can you do?

"So it's just standard unhappiness about the whole situation?"

[whatisay]

"Just them being ingrates. I'm sure you deal with the same problems." He tips his glass at Stephen. "I've heard Molotov is angry she doesn't have a private bathroom. Remember when we used to get District kids and they would be thrilled to have running water?"

It was almost charming or quaint, the way the old Tributes responded to the glory of the Capitol. It makes coming back to this job and being treated as if he, personally, kidnapped each of them a little hard to swallow.

"It's been good to see you, Stephen. I was wondering if you were going to show your face after the incident." He holds his wrist up and jangles an invisible cuff.

[capitolprivilege]

The smile on Stephen's face doesn't lose its friendliness. He picks up on the passive-aggressive undertones; he just doesn't respond to them. "Well, you know how important it is to get back on the horse," he says, swirling his drink. "I learned an important lesson, and I hope I'm a wiser person for it."

[whatisay]

Passive-aggressive? Jason? You must be joking. And then Stephen goes and flings it right back at him.

"Good. You know if I'd gotten caught doing anything like that, I'd have gotten myself exiled. You're lucky you're a Reagan." Once upon a time, the Compsons had that immunity, those second chances that allowed them to heal from their social shortcomings without scar tissue. It's a cautionary tale to Stephen, a reminder that his family's privileged status isn't sacrosanct.

[capitolprivilege]

He does. Stephen almost does it out of habit -- he doesn't mean to be cruel, not exactly, he's just been taught that this is how you respond when you don't like what someone has said in polite company.

"Oh, I know, and I'm grateful for it," Stephen replies. Maybe it's the buzz of the alcohol behind his eyes that makes him go on: "Actually, that's something I think we could all stand to remember a little more. Not that I'm a Reagan," he clarifies, breaking into a laugh, because wow, that sounded terrible, "no, just -- how very lucky we are to be in the positions we're in, and how much worse it could be for us."

[whatisay]

"Right. Lucky." Something deep inside Jason strains at its chains there, the part where his head always hurts, where the budget's never enough, where his mother's always dipping it to try and put on airs they can't afford and they spent more money on flowers for Quentin's funeral than they ever did on Jason's future, where whenever he goes home it's to the sound of his brother's screaming and weeping - but to flood the conversation with that wouldn't be appropriate. There's a difference between congenial complaining and an outright pity party.

He's not about to do the latter in front of a Reagan, even if it isn't Cyrus.

So there's something knifelike about his next smile, something that Stephen may remember from decades ago when Jason was teenager enough to lord his age over Cyrus and Stephen both.

"But that's a limiting way to look at it, isn't it? No wonder they say you don't have ambition. With your pedigree you could be a Gamemaker if you tried, instead of just shuttling fresh meat around."

[capitolprivilege]

Stephen knows that smile, and the tension is more than enough to cut through the haze of alcohol. It's suddenly completely clear to him that -- horror of horrors -- Jason Compson doesn't like him.

It's not a feeling Stephen is used to -- not from Capitolites, anyway.

He blows out a half-whistled, half-laughed breath.

"I could," he says, "and be completely miserable. Is it such a bad thing, being happy with where you are?"

But Stephen realizes, as he says that, that he's not happy where he is. He's not happy as an Escort. He hasn't been for years. Maybe he was for a while, and maybe he'd fooled himself into thinking he was for a while longer, but no -- no, he's not involved in the Hunger Games right now because he likes it.

Oh, god. Stephen feels a little dizzy. He sways a little, and has to shift his feet a little to keep from stumbling.