thecapitol | [closed] the frightening facts we've been facing our backs for so long now

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[closed] the frightening facts we've been facing our backs for so long now

Who| Anna + Jolie, eventually Bro.
What| An awkward conversation, made even more awkward by the fact that Anna doesn't know why it's awkward.
Where| D4 suites!
When| Sometime after Week 4.
Warnings/Notes| Maybe language from Jolie?? Who knows.

After her death in the Arena bloodbath, it's back to routine for Anna. She wakes up in the Capitol unsettled as usual, and just like every other time, she takes a day or two to decompress, keeping mostly to herself in her room, working on an arts and crafts project to keep her hands busy. Even the fact that she gained a boyfriend during this Arena isn't enough to hurry her out of her room; she'll see Bro soon enough, she's sure. She's not worried that he won't have come back; hopefully the two of them caused enough of a stir that they've remained interesting to the Gamemakers.

On the third day, she decides to finally venture outside her little bubble, and rolls out of bed feeling a bit better. She's become strangely zen about all this, after seven Arenas, even though she still has nightmares often enough to be bothersome. And right now, she's decided that she wants to eat a stack of waffles the size of her head and watch something mindless and trashy on TV. So, her hair an undeniable wreck, dressed in her jammies still, she pads out into the suite commons, heading straight for the breakfast spread on the table. She's so out of it, she barely notices the stranger sitting there as she plops down at the table. Yawning hugely, eyes blurry, she pulls an empty plate toward her. "Yrrraughh--pass the syrup?"

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Until recently, Anna hadn't really been a blip on Jolie's radar. She was tangentially aware of her through the drama with her fiance, her sister thanks to Oceana and a few scenarios involving Bro that she'd gleaned over. Even now, Jolie doesn't know much what to think of her. She's cute, sure. She seems to have a fine disposition and she's a fighter even if she isn't the one anyone is betting on here. For the most part she'd just been, well. There. Around.

Jolie doesn't hold anything against her for what happened, because it had been her who put her foot down about it. She couldn't be with Bro in any real capacity and she couldn't be complicit in a relationship with someone 20 years her junior, even as a side partner for Bro exclusively. There's no blame or resentment, but there's bitterness. Anna is younger and cuter and an easy rival to project on. Jolie is privileged in her Capitol citizenship, but it's part of what keeps her from Bro and it gives her more cause to feel a little petty. Just a little.

With a multitude of appointments later in the day, Jolie has spared nothing in her daytime drag. Everything is primped, poised and melded with glue and frustration so as to give an illusion of perfection. She's waiting at the table for Cerise when Anna pads out, raising her glance to watch her with the indifference of a spoiled cat. She gets about the same look when she asks for the syrup, only with a single, arched eyebrow to differentiate.

When she opens her mouth, the words she wants to say involve fuck and off followed by a quip of some sort, but Anna hasn't done anything to deserve that maliciousness. As such, Jolie lifts the syrup and drops it down in front of Anna with a light thud before returning her hand to fold it over her lap. She should say something, it's polite, it's awkward if she just stares. Be nice. Push through this. Just smile. Her lips pull into a forced grin as she stares across the table, deigning Anna with something more than a look of indifference. "Someone's hungry." Hungry for Bro. Shut up.

Edited 2015-03-09 05:45 (UTC)

Anna jumps a little bit at the sound of the syrup bottle dropping down in front of her, and that's when she blinks enough to clear her eyes and actually looks at the person sitting in front of her. "--Oh. Hi!" Sheepish, she gives the drag queen a sleepy smile, dragging no less than five waffles onto her plate.

"Sorry, I didn't even see you there! Or, well, I saw you, I just didn't see who you were. I'm always so groggy in the mornings." Anna seems content to chatter away as she butters her waffles generously. "And hungry, yes," she goes on, with a little giggle. "After not eating a whole lot for a month straight, I always end up going a little overboard."

She grabs for the syrup bottle and proceeds to drown her waffles in sticky sweetness, completely unabashed about the excessiveness of it.

"Morning." She says in a slow and careful tone, much less perky than Anna seems to be, particularly at this hour. She doesn't judge the amount she eats, even if it makes her wonder how she keeps a waistline like that, she just raises her coffee to her lips to take a sip while Anna chatters at her.

"I didn't think you knew me." An eyebrow arches suspiciously and her attention is just that little more focused on what Anna is saying. She leans in a little more, resting her chin on her palm as she pierces a strawberry with a fork and brings it toward herself.

"Won't you make yourself sick?" She asks, like Anna's stomach doesn't defy logic already.

Using her fork and knife in a surprisingly ladylike manner, Anna takes her first bite of waffle and nearly melts all over the table at how good it is. Warm and buttery and sweet, everything she'd been missing during the Arena. She'd had that box of chocolates, of course, but after Bro had gone off hunting and been killed in the process, they'd sort of lost their appeal. Chewing and swallowing, she shrugs.

"I don't! Well, not really. I know who you are, but we've never met! You're, um--Eight's stylist, right?" That's about the extent of Anna's knowledge here, aside from the fact that Jolie is, in fact, a man dressed as a woman, and therefore an object of curiosity to Anna. Lady Cerise is one matter, when she comes off as a harmless, grandmotherly old woman, but this Jolie is another entirely. She's intimidatingly pretty.

The question has Anna shaking her head, her rat's nest of hair rustling as she does. "Nah, I'll be fine. I've eaten way more than this before!"

There's something weirdly enrapturing about watching Anna eat her godawful waffles, but Jolie does her best to focus on her own tasks and not gawk at her every move like she's got a front row seat at the zoo. She does enough of that when they're all in the Arena.

She's not sure if she's disappointed or not that she doesn't know her specifically, but that's good enough. Maybe it's better that she doesn't know all that much about her, otherwise she'd know she's terrifying.

"Suit yourself." She says with a small shrug, happy to move away from topics like perfect waistlines and overindulgence. Fuck you, she's going to dip her next strawberry in maple syrup before she eats it. "You're Anna, right? Bro's.. Friend." She uses that word carefully, daring the other girl to correct her.

Anna lowers her fork at the mention of Bro, her freckled cheeks turning a little pink. "Oh! Yes, well--friend is, um, not the word I'd use, but yeah!" She laughs, feeling a little self-conscious.

"It's weird, having my personal life plastered all over everything." She cringes. "They made...'commemorative' t-shirts. Can you believe that? With our faces on them." The whole thing is deeply embarrassing, honestly.

Well, isn't that fucking precious? Blushing. Adorable. Admittedly it makes Jolie as happy as it much as it deeply annoys her on a level she can't quite express. She chooses to embrace the happier side and smiles coyly over at Anna.

"I'm sure it could be much, much worse." She says vaguely, so vaguely. She doesn't know weird until they start trying to fake sex tapes and the like. "I guess friend isn't the word the Capitol would use, either." There's a level of resignation to her tone that is easy enough to pick up on, but she doesn't try too hard to hide that much. "But he's a good friend to have."

Anna rolls her eyes in agreement, laughing awkwardly. "You're right. I've seen some of the, um--fanfiction you guys have written. Not--not that you wrote any of it, but man, was that weird." She'd thought it was an innocent story of friendship and sisterhood starring her and Elsa...not so much.

Jolie talking about Bro and friendship makes Anna curious, however, so she tilts her head. "Oh, I suppose so! How do you know him, anyway?"

"I've probably written some of it. Nineinchnancy? That's me." She smiles in a way that makes it sincerely hard to tell whether she's joking or legitimate about her foray into adult fiction. Why write about it when she lives it? To give the people what they want, obviously. She can spill the real T. Which, incidentally, she intends to do now.

"We slept together. A lot." She says curtly. There shouldn't be a reason to lie and if there is, there's a problem. "It was just about that at first, but I guess he has a personality somewhere in that blond, coconut head of his." She rolls her eyes dramatically and then realises she should stop making this about her. "So, have you ever..Eee-ee." She trails off and pulls a face before she makes her point by imitating the sound of a mattress squeaking. "Y'know?"

Of all the times to enter the kitchen for a snack, this is probably not the best time. He manages to catch only a part of what Jolie says- the most important part, as it happens. For a split second, he feels a pang of jealousy that's quickly outweighed by the awkwardness of having two of his squeezes in the same room together.

He tries to act casual as he moves over to the fridge, opening it so he can grab a jug of milk.

"You slept with who a lot?" he asks, before raising the jug of milk to his lips to start chugging on it.

Anna's face goes from flushed to pale in 0.3 seconds when Jolie just casually throws out that her and Bro slept together. A lot. Anna's jaw drops, and she stutters for a moment, because Jolie is just going on and asking awkward questions, and the poor princess can't process this enough to sputter a "Wha--no!"

Because of course not.

And then who should traipse into the D4 kitchen like he owns the damn place but the man of the hour himself. Anna jumps as he comes into the room, still sputtering a little. "Y-you," she manages, "apparently!" She shakes her head, trying to make sense of all this. Looking back to Jolie with wide, confused eyes, she tries to reason this out aloud. "But you're...a man, really, and that--he's a man, too, that's..." She deflates a little. "I don't understand."

There's no shame here. None at all. Okay, maybe she does straighten up a little quickly here and she turns to make a face at Bro for interrupting her questioning. She doesn't expect that just looking at him is enough to make her chest ache, but she is opting to be irreverent in the face of great drama.

"If you want my life story you better take a seat." Her tone is a little more reserved this time around, but she moves on to the more interesting factor of conversation. Anna. Anna doesn't know about gay sex. This is great. She puts a hand on her chest, as if she's offended by this. "A man, she says. In a dress like this? Never."

Now she can't help laughing. "I could recommend you some reading. It's riveting stuff."

Edited 2015-03-17 04:23 (UTC)

It takes it all a few seconds to click, somewhere between the first glug and the third. It's definitely before the fourth that he makes an unattractive gagging noise and it's possible that a bit of milk comes out of his nose. You'll never know, because he's wiping it all away quickly.

This is his worst nightmare. It's not that he's necessarily kept any of it a secret from Anna, it's just never come up in conversation.

And he's kept it a secret, so fucking sue him. He just never thought it would come up. Jolie sueems like the kind of person who would be discreet, but apparently not. Anna is just a delicate flower, she needs to be introduced to gay sex in a careful manner, not over breakfast. Goddamn it.

"Uh."

Eloguent as fuck. "Okay, so. You have no problems with a man dressing up as a woman, but two men having sex breaks your brain?" He sounds a little exasperated. He really fucking is. He doesn't know how to handle this stuff delicately, if he'd have even thought about it, he would have hoped someone else would be the one to introduce Anna to the concept of gay sex. "Why are we even talking about this? Who brought this up?" An accusatory look is shot at Jolie.

Anna just shakes her head, Jolie's coy little jokes not getting far with her. She's confused, sure, but she's also a little hurt. "I--it just never occurred to me," she admits, cheeks coloring a little bit. She can't help feeling defensive. They just didn't talk about that kind of thing where she came from.

"I mean--she was talking about you, and I asked how, um, how she knew you," Anna goes on. "But--why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you tell me?" She's trying not to sound as hurt as she feels, because she wants to try and be adult about all this.

Jolie is the sort for discretion, when it's necessary. She is aware that Anna is more reserved than most, but with a boyfriend like Bro it seems strange that she'd be this oblivious. Regardless of that, Jolie doesn't think an adult relationship is anything they need to hide and she isn't the sort to cover someone else's ass when it isn't on the line.

So, she's just going to half turn in her seat and raise a brow at Bro, especially since he decided to be accusatory at her. She's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here, but this is a dangerous question and he needs to nail the landing. The silence is probably more meaningful than any snark she could come up with.

The silence that follows Anna's question could probably be cut by a butter knife, it's that thick. Bro honestly doesn't know what to say right offhand because the truth is he has no good excuse. He probably should have laid out all his previous history with Jolie, but there was just no good time to do it.

Or so he tells himself. There was probably plenty of time, but who even likes discussing past relationships? Especially ones of a highly sexual nature such as theirs.

"Well." He's stalling as he tries to think of a good reason. "It..." Okay, fuck it he's going to have to go for the basic bitch response. "It never came up." Fuck his life.

Anna's trying to keep her cool, but more than being angry, or upset, she's embarrassed. She's just been questioned about her sexual experience--which comes to exactly none--and informed that her boyfriend just happens to be into other men. Men who dress as women. It's humiliating, mostly due to her own lack of knowledge.

"It never came up?" Anna repeats, scandalized. "We've known each other nine months and it never came up that you were, well, doing that, with her?" She feels a little hopeless, honestly, her shoulders falling. "I don't really know what to say."

There's a small part of Jolie that would be glad for Bro to get told off for being a dumb ass, mostly because she's still salty about him giving her that look. As if she's to blame for being honest when Anna asks her question, honestly.

She folds her hands over her lap and thins her lips looking between the two of them, then down to the strawberries on the table, then up at Anna, then Bro, then she opens her mouth, shuts it and falls silent again before she shakes her head and rolls her eyes at Bro.

"Hey, look. Everyone has different priorities, right? You weren't dating until, what, a month ago? I think you probably had more important to talk about then who was sticking what where." She waves a hand airily. "And the last thing I want is for management to get on my ass because people are talking about having sex with me on public broadcast television." She flits her hand again and then moves to rest her chin on it, talking almost exclusively to Anna this time. "If he wasn't telling you shit, it's because he was respecting my privacy. And because he's a dumb ass who doesn't think it's a big deal, it's a modern thing. Sex falls off trees once you get past the twentieth century."

Edited 2015-03-18 09:00 (UTC)

Like, five arenas, and this is sincerely the hardest situation he's ever been in. How does life manage to work like that? How is killing and being killed suddenly easier than talking about his sex life? He can't help but give Anna an incredulous look when she says that, because honestly he doesn't get why she's making such a fuss about it. It never came up is a perfectly valid reason not to talk about something.

As buttmad as he is towards Jolie, the relief that washes over him when she finally starts speaking sensibly is extreme. "See?" he says, throwing his hands up. "There. She said everything I wanted to say."

He realizes it's a bit like they're ganging up on Anna, and he really doesn't want things to go downhill between them. The thought makes his stomach roll. "Look- I'm sorry. Jolie and I- we ended shit before you and I got together. It's not like we've been banging in the closet secretly this entire time." He coughs a little, remembering a couple of closeted experiences that he probably shouldn't be thinking about right now. "So, yeah. I guess I'm an asshole because I didn't think it was a big deal, either."

Another thought occurs to him in a spur of the moment, and he clicks his tongue. "We never made it to the part in our relationship where we talk about past relationships, so while beans are getting spilled, did you ever get busy with that smelly dude?" he raises his eyebrows, looking at Anna pointedly. Probably not the best time to be a slightly jealous, nosy boyfriend. But hey. It's happening.

Anna's trying very hard to be rational right now. She doesn't want to be mad, she doesn't want this to turn into a problem. And what Jolie says helps; Anna manages a weak smile in the queen's directions. "Thank you," she says softly, turning her attention toward Bro as he chimes in. His words are far more brash, and she can't help a little wrinkle of her brow, which then turns into mild outrage.

"What--no! Me and Kristoff, we never--I've never--" She shakes her head, lowering her gaze to the table, where her half-eaten waffles are getting cold. Her cheeks are getting pink. "Anyway," she finishes, "I guess it's better that I found out now, huh?"

Jolie preens at the affirmation of her eloquence, tilting her chin upward and folding her arms over her chest with a smug air. She rolls her eyes at the way he martyrs himself, but all in all she thinks she may have saved him from dropping the ball there.

Until he says that.

She gasps, not because of the indecency but because of the unbridled stupidity on Bro's behalf. "Oh my god, how do you make it through a fucking day without getting the sideburns slapped off you?" She turns in her chair to give him a bemused look, trying not to cackle uproariously for Anna's sake.

"I guess so." She says finally, with a small shrug of her shoulders. "I'm sure it's nothing the both of you couldn't deal with, no need to fight over little old me." She fluffs the bottom of her wig primly, lips curling in a sly smile. "But if Mountain Man comes back, I call dibs. I like blonds. How's your sister, by the way?" She's tempted to ask if Bro's brother is still underage, but it feels in poor taste. You know, as opposed to everything else.

It's not hard to tell from both of their reactions that he kind of fucked up. Now really wasn't the time to do this, and that is confirmed right away. He cringes and presses a hand to his forehead, wishing that he could just disappear. That a wave of orange soda would just pass through and he could surf away on it. Something.

He cuts his eyes at Jolie for her comment in regards to Kristoff, but quickly bites back any jealousy that tries to rear it's ugly head. "Go on, have dibs. It's not like either of us are gonna care."

He turns his attention back to Anna. "Look, do you... I dunno. Wanna talk later? Leaving you two alone is probably the worst idea I could ever have, but. Maybe you need it." Because he's a dunce and clearly shouldn't be part of the conversation anymore.

Anna's finding it hard to keep up with all this talk--with Jolie's banter about Kristoff, and Bro's reply. She feels sort of dazed, like she's not really here in this room, having this conversation, but rather like she's some sort of ghost that's just taking it all in. But Bro's question brings her back to reality.

"Oh. Yeah--sure." She nods, trying to look something like normal. Like her usual chipper self. She forces a smile. "Sounds good. I'll, uh, catch you later."

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[closed] the frightening facts we've been facing our backs for so long now

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