Now I Got These Alligators On My Feet [OPEN]

[pimpcanes]

WHO| Black Tom and open!
WHAT| Black Tom is obnoxious as all hell as he prepares for nuptials.
WHEN| A little after the Crowning.
WHERE| Everywhere around the Capitol, the D10 Suite, your doorway.
WARNINGS| Abuse of police authority?

To say Tom's being obnoxious about his upcoming wedding would be a wild understatement. That would be like calling the ocean 'a little damp' or Caesar Flickerman 'a little showy'. Tom's spent the last week being completely insufferable, making a show of having his belongings moved out so he can go live in the castle he received for his Crowning ("it's my third castle, really," he tells anyone who'll listen) and flipping through men's fashion magazines less out of curiosity than because he enjoys ripping pages out, balling them up, and tossing them aside as "complete garbage" for an audience.

Though the denizens of District Ten are taking the brunt of Tom's behaviors, but he takes his egomania out for the odd walk, too. People minding their own business are shanghaied into giving him advice about what the most fashionable styles for facial hair are, and if he should dye his greys out or keep them to look distinguished; other Tributes get asked to model in different tuxedos to see how they look without Tom having to change out of whatever he's in; other Mentors get quizzed on the symbolism of various flowers.

Some of the unlucky souls who haven't answered his and Molotov's RSVPs will find his rapping on their door, then brandishing handcuffs if they're fool enough to open up. "I hate to tell you this, but it turns out you're under arrest, boyo," he says (regardless of the gender of his target).

Comments

[seestheman]

The fact that he wants her at his wedding should be touching on some level. It isn't, not at all. "Are you sure your bride to be wants you to show off just how much you refuse to act like an adult on her big day?" Okay, the little she knows about Molotov...she'd probably find it amusing, but bringing up the threat of ruining her big day seems like a better tactic at this point.

Yanking her door wide open and taking away the closest thing she had left to a barrier in this situation doesn't scare her (well, doesn't just scare her), it makes her mad. "Of course I do," she spits the words out, doing her best to keep from yelling. "More than you'd like to believe. And I understand how much they distrust off-worlders, no matter how eagerly they take to being on the Capitol's side, and that they'd never give you the power to arrest someone because of a silly vendetta." It isn't much to work with, but it could be enough (it probably isn't and she knows that). And while she'd try to stand up a little bit to a proper peacekeeper, she'd be going along at this point, if only to keep from showing her true colors to the Capitol, but she sees Tom's place with them as honorary at best, especially in this situation.

[pimpcanes]

"Molotov loves me as I am." Which includes his childish tantrums, or so Tom believes. He's always been a volatile personality, to say the least, and he doubts that that will be tempered by any amount of love or any weight of ring.

But now he leans in close, the doorway with one hand anchoring him. His voice is tight, his eyes narrow and there's a line between his nostrils and the corners of his mouth that show how deadly serious he is. "Of course they would, because you have even fewer rights than I do. Don't think that I hold any illusions whatsoever about the fact that we're both captives here. You're just more of one than I am."

[seestheman]

"Yes, I'm sure that you're everything she's ever dreamed of," she says dryly. Though, knowing the little she does about Molotov, it wouldn't be too surprising to have her mostly sarcastic statement confirmed.

She straightens up as he leans in, an attempt to show that she's going to stand her ground with him, that he can't intimidate her, despite the fact that she can feel her heart pounding and she wishes that there was some way to escape when she knows she can't. "I may be more of a captive, but if you have more eyes on you waiting for you to stumble." If there was one thing that she had learned in the Arenas as someone who was both on the bottom rung and then afterwards through winning, it was that it was better to be in the middle in the Capitol, to be part of the crowd. Sure, she still had eyes on her, but not half as many as Tom had drawn to himself. "I'm sure the people of the Capitol would find it thrilling to find one of their off-world heroes be knocked down a peg for insubordination, or whatever else they might pin you with for arresting someone who just decided not to go where she isn't welcome."

[pimpcanes]

"Oh, I'm sure. But I have plenty of resources to rehabilitate my image. There are entire beverage companies that might just wither on the vine if I were to lose my status, and they have plenty to gain from protecting me." He tries to get further into the room, wanting to all but flounce around in her suite.

"Besides, do you think the press is more likely to believe me, a loyal ally, or you, whose husband went mad and murdered good Capitol Citizens before being put down like the animal he was?"

[seestheman]

That's something Clara can't deny, or fight. She knows that her resources, compared to Tom's at least, are far more limited. Not that she doesn't have any, obviously, but not as many as he does. She fits a certain niche, and part of that disappeared with Alex's death, and she knows that far too well.

But him bringing up Alex puts her on the defensive, makes her square her shoulders and want to defend her late husband. She knows she can't, not if she wants to keep her image at all intact. "I am not my husband," she says firmly, so tempted to point out that Alex wasn't in control, that she wishes that she knew who was so she could find them and...she isn't sure what she'd do if she were confronted by them. "And I am not going with you, Mr. Cassidy."

[pimpcanes]

"Yes," he says, now firmly in her suite and taking a seat on her couch, watching with insolent amusement. "You are. And I imagine we'll both be all the happier if you don't do so in cuffs."

He's practically begging her to strike him. He wants her to escalate it, to give him a reason to pull out his department-sanctioned taser and put her down to the ground. He'd hit her with it more than once, too. One shock for every drop of blood he choked on back in the Arena she won.