thecapitol | Your rhinestone eyes are like factories far away

Entry tags:

Your rhinestone eyes are like factories far away

Who| Molotov and Black Tom, A GIANT FUCKING OPEN PARTY
What| Molotov has one of those birthday things
Where| Tom's Mentor Suite, .infinity
When| August 7th
Warnings/Notes| to be updated if necessary

I. For Tom
Birthdays are honestly not something that Molotov finds very important. At most, they're an excuse to be treated specially, and she's now treated specially 24/7. It becomes almost boring after a while, and so she has mostly thrown away the gifts and bouquets that began arriving from fans about a week ago. She's kept a handful of the good ones, but really, what does she need with more roses? More candy, more clothing? She'd give them to charity if there were any, but she winds up tossing most of it in garbage bags that she gives to Avoxes to throw away.

She puts some of the bouquets, the nicer ones, in the common areas of the Suite. She thinks that's a very nice thing of her to do for the rest of them.

So when the alarm goes off in the morning, she doesn't really expect anything out of today, at least not on a personal level. She knows she has to go to her birthday party in the evening, but even that's more of a contractual obligation than anything else (it's being sponsored by the companies that make her vodka and lingerie lines). In fact, she even made it perfectly clear to Tom last night that she doesn't want to go out and do anything, and she'll be perfectly fine if he doesn't even remember. Or just pretends to forget.

Molotov isn't dumb enough to think he'll listen, because if there's a chance to show off, he'll take it. But she can say she tried.

II. Open prompt at .infinity nightclub

It is bright. It is loud. It is amazing.

It is Molotov's birthday party (brought to you by M Vodka and Consummare Apparel).

The party doesn't even begin until ten at night, and everyone of any importance in the Capitol has been invited, whether they showed up or not: Helena and Julian of Panem Nightly News are chatting up anyone who'll let them talk, and Cesar Flickerman is in the pool with roughly two dozen beautiful young people surrounding him.

All Games personnel and of-age Tributes have had an open invitation extended to them.

The music is loud, the dance floor packed, and there's a plethora of waitresses in heart-shaped eyepatches and lingerie walking around with trays of free alcohol. Vodka shots and cocktails abound -- don't get alcohol poisoning.

Molotov herself is up on the VIP balcony, which is roped off and contains few other people, though she might approve you if she likes you enough. She looks down over the party like a goddess, only coming down occasionally for the first hour or two, because she's still annoyed at wardrobe. She can't say she ever thought it would take three interns combined to pull a dress over her ass, or that she'd sit through four hours of hair on her own birthday.

But you'll be forgiven for focusing on her face, because for the first time since she arrived, Molotov is out in public without an eyepatch. Her left eye has been replaced, for the evening, with a glass one that seems to contain a whole galaxy, and the stars swirl and soar artfully between each blink of her eye.

She still can't see out of it, but at least it's pretty.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Cassidy," she pants, and she's not sure if she's appending what he said or correcting it, but she supposes it hardly matters either way, given the point he's at. Her fingers press into the back of his neck, and she's nowhere near where he is, but she did get hers before this, before he put a ring on her hand and his name on hers.

She leans forward a little, hair hanging down over both of them, and breathes next to his ear, whines. "Thomas... come inside me, Thomas..."

"Yes, yes." He moans and bites his lip, straining the back of his neck against her fingers, feeling the weight of the ring as it pulls at her hand. All his consciousness focuses, sharpens, drives into a stake-point at the center of their connection, and then explodes into a spike of white light that leaves him gasping for breath and melting inside her.

She makes a small noise, resting her cheek on his shoulder and pressing her forehead against his neck as she slows down to just a gentle rocking in his lap. Running her fingers through his hair, she sighs and holds him close to her, chest to chest, heartbeats still wild next to each other.

"Christ," he whispers. He feels old and yet reborn, suddenly deeply exhausted, all the energy sucked straight out of his bones, and yet he's warm and blissful too. He smiles with each tug of her fingers in his hair.

"I'll have to come up with a way to give you many multiple orgasms for the wedding night."

Molotov laughs softly, scratches the back of his head, then lets her other hand trail to his chest, lightly tracing lines there along the definition of muscles, scars, bones. She's still smiling, her toes curled a little.

"I think you do a fine job already, you don't need to go crazy."

"But I have to make it special. A lovemaking worth remembering." It's probably more important to do so for the sake of his sense of grandeur and presentation than it is for any sexual ego. He just would rather things go as planned, in the most ostentatious way he can manage.

"You just want to show off," she murmurs, kissing the edge of his jaw, then slides down to sit next to him again, leaning her head to the side to rest it on his shoulder. She chooses his scarf to clean up with and drops it on his lap for him when she's done. "You'll have a whole honeymoon anyway."

Wrapping her arm around his waist, she sighs. "Are you coming to the thing tonight? You don't have to, it's going to be awful."

"Does that surprise you? I always want to show off. It's in me nature." He cleans up idly, nuzzling into the crook of her neck, then sighs.

"Are you sure you won't be mad with me if I don't? Planning all this has me knackered."

"Of course it doesn't surprise me, I know you. I was just pointing out that you're lying to make it seem like you're doing it for me." Her eye is closed and she hooks her ankle over his, bumping their toes together with a smile.. "Dishonest man."

"No, it's fine. I don't want to go at all, but I'm under contract to be there from eleven to two. Whatever. I just have to get through it."

"You'd be bored with me if I were honest."

He sighs with relief. "Good. If I have to spend another day on my feet this damn's leg's going to telescope into itself. I need an evening in bed with a hot water bottle for it."

Now that they aren't in the middle of sex he can admit he's kind of old and lame.

"We'd probably fight less over card games." Because they both cheat and lie -- it would make their poker games substantially easier if Molotov was the only one doing that.

She knows he's old and lame, and she loves him anyway, moving her hand down to gently rub where she knows his leg aches. "Don't fall asleep though, or at least be ready to get woken up. There's no way in hell I'm getting through this night sober. Not even close. I might need a new liver by morning."

"The fighting's half the fun of the game." He wouldn't be able to bear it if she beat him honestly.

"Don't drink so much you can't enjoy the bottle of red I bought us, at least." He sighs as she runs her hand over his leg. He's long become accustomed to the idea of it always being a hindrance, but it's somehow worse as he gets older - not in intensity but in implication.

"You say that like it's even possible for me to drink that much." While Molotov does have a limit, as everyone does, she seems to have an almost superhuman tolerance for alcohol, requiring enough to liquor to knock out a frat boy before she even feels it. The way she drinks, one could be forgiven for thinking that vodka becomes water in her mouth.

Her thumb runs on his skin and she sighs. "They must be able to do something about this. So it doesn't hurt you so much."

Tom smirks at that, but there's a chilliness to it, a hesitation. There's drinking, and then there's alcoholism, and it's hard not to remember how Theresa crawled into a bottle for years and blamed him for it.

But Molotov never seems the type to surpass her limits. Maybe because she doesn't have them.

He sighs back. "We've been over this. I don't want Capitol doctors poking around my body any more than they have to. For all we know they'd give me a complimentary rhinoplasty while I was under just because."

It's a blurry line for Molotov, who drinks from the time she wakes up until she goes to bed. But she never seems to have much trouble going sober when necessary, for missions or when she was a Tribute, never really goes through withdrawals or loss of control. It's easy for her to stop at one when she thinks it appropriate. This particular night warrants a different attitude, she feels.

But she can't explain it any better than anyone else. Maybe it was all the years alone. Maybe it's just being Russian.

She huffs and pouts. "I know, but I don't like that it hurts you. And think of everything you could do if it didn't ache all the time. Anyway, you have a good nose, they wouldn't change it."

Well, it's not like Tom abstains from drinking. He's no saint when it comes to alcohol, although he's left the blackout binges in his youth.

He thinks of it all the time, and sometimes he pushes through the pain and does it anyway, and sometimes he allows himself to be reclusive and gentle with himself. The latter always leaves him thinking he'd have felt better just swallowing the pain.

"See, that's exactly why I don't know that they wouldn't. Your coworker Julian had perfectly fine teeth before they replaced them with a horse's, didn't he? For all I know they'll decide my face isn't exotic enough and replace my eyes with shamrocks."

"Julian wanted horse teeth, and anyway, they're back to normal now. Maybe the doctors could do something without surgery. Pain relief or something."

Molotov cranes her neck to kiss the side of his, where she can feel his pulse throbbing, and takes his hand in hers, the one with the enormous ring making it more difficult to lace their fingers together. She exhales contentedly and squeezes his hand tight.

"Actual shamrocks or eyeballs shaped like shamrocks? It's important to be clear on these things."

"I suppose it might be worth examining." He doesn't sound committed to it, and the truth is that he's terrified of doctors after what Killebrew did to him. He'll suffer the pain instead.

He rubs his thumb over the small part of her knuckle not entirely obscured

"Jewels cut into the shapes of shamrocks. Only the glitziest for the Capitol, my dear."

She doesn't say anything more, and she won't push it further, they both know that. But she worries -- that he won't be able to dance with her at their wedding, that he'll become dependent on the cane, that he won't be able to run if they need to run.

"They can use the diamonds they probably thought you'd want on my ring. I won't lie and say I'm not disappointed that I can't use blindness to dress you up as the cereal leprechaun and send you out into the world." Her lips twist wryly as she resettles her head on his shoulder. "Hearts, stars and horseshoes..."

Someday, he'll tell her. He'll explain what they did to him in their experiments, why the cutesy moniker 'tree cancer' doesn't explain what happened, doesn't encompass the torture strapped to that table.

It's not a matter of closeness. It's a part of his past he's not ready to dredge up again. Sometimes it bubbles to the surface, but it's not a place he goes willingly.

"Maybe I'll be blinded by all the gems I'm about to buy you. Then you can have me after your lucky charms by sound alone."

She only wants for him to feel better, to be as whole as he can be made, and she's never fretted this way about anyone else before, so she doesn't know how to suppress the need to dote and question.

"I don't want any gems, I'll give you my lucky charms for free," she says, pulling his hand to her mouth so she can kiss it. "You don't have to buy me things, Tom. That's not who I am, you know."

"Why must you thwart my attempts to show you how much I love you?" He receives the kiss and then cups her face, grinning. "Why must you thwart my attempts to show off, really?"

Because that's what Tom's idea of love is, something solipsistic and cyclical, two people in a feedback loop of affection and passion and ego.

"Because it annoys you." She smiles at him, touches his hands, and the diamond in her ring glints. "Besides, how is it showing off if I can afford my own jewels? Probably more than you can, even. Is that why you proposed, do you need a sugar mama?"

Molotov has a very poor idea of love, and she knows it, knows that what she understands is sick and twisted and poisoned, tied up with hate and fear and something she could never describe with words. She spent half her life stuck in that gnarled mess, and it's tainted everything in her world. But Tom doesn't make her feel that way, or at least not the parts that make her stomach clench, and all she wants is to ensure there's no change, to keep them on solid ground.

She doesn't want it to be ground made of only gifts and grand gestures. That's not much better than punches and blood.

"Do you want us to compare accounts? After all, I have a Victor's wages in addition to all the Sponsorships, and a bit of public humane appeal being a doting father type to Miss Stark."

He strokes her cheek. "No, I don't buy you gifts because you can't afford them. I do it because it's just a more lovely way of expressing how I feel for you."

"Victor's wages are nothing compared to the residuals I get off the 10pm and midnight reruns for PNN," she teases, and they both know that she's just as cushioned in Sponsorships as he is. "But we can start counting bullion if you'd like."

Molotov sighs and tilts her head toward his hand, her eyelid lowering a little as she looks at him. "Nothing is more lovely than you are. That's all I want or need."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject