Temple Stevens (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clotting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2015-11-03 02:14 pm
clotting) wrote in thecapitol2015-11-03 02:14 pm
Never Seen the Ocean, Never Seen the Tides [OPEN]
WHO| Temple and OPEN; Temple and Clint
WHAT| Temple hits the town and goes to a spa.
WHEN| Week 6
WHERE| All over the Capitol
WARNINGS| Temple, so mentions of rape may happen, although anything in-depth will get its own warning.
I. OPEN
When rabbits are cornered by predators, they freeze. Some theories say they go blind from fright, too terrified to even see the escapes before their noses. This would be an apt description for Temple's current state, with her best friend labeled a traitor and the Peacekeepers more than willing to drag her son into the political mess of Mentorhood, but the paralyzing, myopia-inducing fear only constricts her ability to think, not to party. Not to hit the town with a child leashed to an Avox or shopping bags laden with enough goods to dress an entire District for a week.
She's aggressively friendly if she meets you on the street, trailing her Avoxes behind her like a wedding train. Something about it is almost desperate, as if the doll-like facade that she so buries herself under is cracked and brittle and she's just trying to patch the leaks with her palms and her handshakes. She's liable to get your name wrong, since she's been drinking since six a.m. this morning, although these lapses in memory are the only indicator that she's that inebriated. Sometimes she just approaches people she knows and hands them a shopping bag of expensive wares, insisting that she was thinking of them as she was shopping and knew they had to have it. She does this especially to Tributes, although occasionally to other Staffers.
Sometimes she cruises the local restaurants and clubs eyeing up those she might be able to take to bed with her with no concerns, no witnesses. Few people know as many blind spots in the Capitol as Temple Stevens, adulterous to a fault but discrete enough to never have anything caught on tape. There are, of course, clips of her kissing, canoodling, placing her hands in places that daytime airings of the Games would censor, but never anything enough to terminate a marriage on principle. Besides, there are enough open marriages in the Capitol that no one ever bothers to truly look twice at a District hussy in Capitol clothes.
By the beginnings of most nights, she's bubbly, fashionable, charming and more than willing to buy friends and strangers alike a drink. By the end, she tends to be a bit more maudlin, still spending money haphazardly but less out of generosity and more as a prophylactic to feeling poor.
Find her for company, or she'll find you.
II. Clint
If there's a better cure for loneliness and sorrow than a fresh coat of paint, Temple doesn't know what it is. She doesn't believe in the therapy that is prescribed to Victors of the Hunger Games, and she dabbles in medication and psychic enemas only occasionally, when they come back into vogue every other year or so. The only way she's ever known to feel better about anything is to obliterate her woes under an aggressive spotlight, to cover them in makeup and hairspray, jewels and manicures, with liquor and sedatives as the fixative.
And naturally, she's noticed that all Clint's friends are gone. She may be morally opposed to inter-District alliances in the Arena, but she can respect that he must be sad and lonely, so instead of shuffling him off to a photoshoot today she gets Swann's permission to pack him into a car and take him to a spa. She doesn't tell him where they're going, just grins and says it's a surprise, and when they arrive she presents him with what must be the most shi-shi getaway in all the Capitol.
The entire spa smells like heavenly cinnamon fragrances, positioned over a natural waterfall with Avoxes tending to the hot springs at the base. There are steam rooms, sensory deprivation chambers, seal-fur robes that have never before touched human skin that will be discarded after a single use, ornately-carved wooden chairs and benches and masseuses at hand with entire carts of lotions and incense. The tessellated tiles along the floor are myriad colors, and the lights warming them from beneath cast the entire scene in stained glass. Some Capitolites in the far corner are receiving truly decadent manicures and facials.
She clutches her hands together in little fists under her chin and then checks them in. "Would you like to do the steam room first? You look so tired, lately. Maybe get changed into a robe and let one of the masseuses take out your tension? This is a high-end spa, those are professional masseuses, not just Avoxes trained to rub out a knot."
As she says that last array of words, she starts to undress, entirely without shame.
WHAT| Temple hits the town and goes to a spa.
WHEN| Week 6
WHERE| All over the Capitol
WARNINGS| Temple, so mentions of rape may happen, although anything in-depth will get its own warning.
I. OPEN
When rabbits are cornered by predators, they freeze. Some theories say they go blind from fright, too terrified to even see the escapes before their noses. This would be an apt description for Temple's current state, with her best friend labeled a traitor and the Peacekeepers more than willing to drag her son into the political mess of Mentorhood, but the paralyzing, myopia-inducing fear only constricts her ability to think, not to party. Not to hit the town with a child leashed to an Avox or shopping bags laden with enough goods to dress an entire District for a week.
She's aggressively friendly if she meets you on the street, trailing her Avoxes behind her like a wedding train. Something about it is almost desperate, as if the doll-like facade that she so buries herself under is cracked and brittle and she's just trying to patch the leaks with her palms and her handshakes. She's liable to get your name wrong, since she's been drinking since six a.m. this morning, although these lapses in memory are the only indicator that she's that inebriated. Sometimes she just approaches people she knows and hands them a shopping bag of expensive wares, insisting that she was thinking of them as she was shopping and knew they had to have it. She does this especially to Tributes, although occasionally to other Staffers.
Sometimes she cruises the local restaurants and clubs eyeing up those she might be able to take to bed with her with no concerns, no witnesses. Few people know as many blind spots in the Capitol as Temple Stevens, adulterous to a fault but discrete enough to never have anything caught on tape. There are, of course, clips of her kissing, canoodling, placing her hands in places that daytime airings of the Games would censor, but never anything enough to terminate a marriage on principle. Besides, there are enough open marriages in the Capitol that no one ever bothers to truly look twice at a District hussy in Capitol clothes.
By the beginnings of most nights, she's bubbly, fashionable, charming and more than willing to buy friends and strangers alike a drink. By the end, she tends to be a bit more maudlin, still spending money haphazardly but less out of generosity and more as a prophylactic to feeling poor.
Find her for company, or she'll find you.
II. Clint
If there's a better cure for loneliness and sorrow than a fresh coat of paint, Temple doesn't know what it is. She doesn't believe in the therapy that is prescribed to Victors of the Hunger Games, and she dabbles in medication and psychic enemas only occasionally, when they come back into vogue every other year or so. The only way she's ever known to feel better about anything is to obliterate her woes under an aggressive spotlight, to cover them in makeup and hairspray, jewels and manicures, with liquor and sedatives as the fixative.
And naturally, she's noticed that all Clint's friends are gone. She may be morally opposed to inter-District alliances in the Arena, but she can respect that he must be sad and lonely, so instead of shuffling him off to a photoshoot today she gets Swann's permission to pack him into a car and take him to a spa. She doesn't tell him where they're going, just grins and says it's a surprise, and when they arrive she presents him with what must be the most shi-shi getaway in all the Capitol.
The entire spa smells like heavenly cinnamon fragrances, positioned over a natural waterfall with Avoxes tending to the hot springs at the base. There are steam rooms, sensory deprivation chambers, seal-fur robes that have never before touched human skin that will be discarded after a single use, ornately-carved wooden chairs and benches and masseuses at hand with entire carts of lotions and incense. The tessellated tiles along the floor are myriad colors, and the lights warming them from beneath cast the entire scene in stained glass. Some Capitolites in the far corner are receiving truly decadent manicures and facials.
She clutches her hands together in little fists under her chin and then checks them in. "Would you like to do the steam room first? You look so tired, lately. Maybe get changed into a robe and let one of the masseuses take out your tension? This is a high-end spa, those are professional masseuses, not just Avoxes trained to rub out a knot."
As she says that last array of words, she starts to undress, entirely without shame.
I - on the streets
He spots her from afar. A woman who has him wondering like many Mentors do, if people notice his associations on him as well as they notice their heritage. Or perhaps her trail of Avoxes hide hers better than his stitches hide his. Some irony in that, he's certain.
With a sway in his hips, he walks to her, arms spread wide as though to express the dramatic exclamation of, Temple, darling. Like they're any sort of close at all. Temple Drake is one of those few where it was a gamble as to who of them would make the other look better, and that in itself could occasionally be a step up.
Finally in her midst, his hands clasp together as if she is only the most charming individual in the world. His head tilts in question to ask how it is that she's doing. At the very least, she could help to feed the ever-loved gossip mill.
no subject
Floating alone even surrounded with the mutes, Temple latches onto any attempt to feel as if she has friends that haven't disappeared into the ether, aren't working themselves into a stupor every day. When Kurloz greets her with a pretense of familiarity, she responds to it like a sunflower to light.
"Kurloz!" She throws her arms around him, into that friendly hug that she quickly follows with a kiss to each cheek. "How wonderful to see you out here. Shopping or just looking for inspiration, my dear?"
no subject
He brings his arms around her as well, giving one surprisingly warm for everything he is. He pulls back and matches her kiss for kiss, quicker than hers lest the feel of his stitches inflict distress. He steps back and beams.
So follows a twirling wave of his hand. Oh, you know. He gestures out, palms up, with one hand then the other, before bring them back up to clasp together. A little of this, a little of that. Both, as the usual. He gestures out at her then. And you?
no subject
"Oh, I've been well." It isn't true at all, but Temple certainly can't show that she's upset that a traitor was driven out of the city (probably dead), no matter how close she and Linden supposedly were. And Temple is better at few things than she is at lying and pretending nothing's wrong.
She pulls back and claps her hands together. "Alright, I know that this isn't technically allowed, but I'm just dying to see what you've got set up for your Tributes for the Crowning. It wouldn't kill you to give me a peak, would it?"