Julie Grigio (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
misscabernet) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2013-05-27 12:50 am
misscabernet) wrote in thecapitol2013-05-27 12:50 am
Entry tags:
[open!]
Who: Julie Grigio and OPEN
What; Getting used to being around myriads of people and generally reacting to a normal life in general. What is normalcy???
Where: The training center, wandering around, WHEREVER U WANT HER.
When; Post-Arena
Warnings/Notes: idk cursing I guess
Julie was thinking how weird it was -- only in retrospect, of course -- that the first time she'd been back in a, moving city after, oh, ten years, she'd needed to take it in alone. It was overwhelming, all of it: people moving without watching their backs, dressed in flashy, overwrought clothes that they hadn't scavenged from shredded corpse two towns back. There were wigs and bright gleaming gems and restaurants that sold food without rot and maggots and, Christ, she could get anything she fucking wanted if only she could figure out what that was.
She still wasn't sure. All of that wishing for what not only she'd lost, but humanity itself -- maybe it was just something simple. Fireworks and making out with Perry under a full moon, veins warm with beer. Then they could go see some stupid action movie where things exploded but not into sparks of color, and there was always a sweeping soundtrack, music that wasn't guarded jealously because it was so hard to find.
Going out and taking it all in was too much. She'd heard about it: culture shock. Had to figure this was something like it. So after that fiasco (where her heart had pounded and she'd felt a little sick from the lights and the natural heat of too many humans in too small a space), she stayed inside. Quieter there. And training, no matter how fucked it seemed, was normal. Keep up the accuracy, always be on your toes. No rest. Don't stop looking behind you.
God, if she could thank dad for all his shitty new-world colloquialisms that stuck in her head.
She was getting more adventurous. Wow, small goddamn victories. Still, she kept thinking... it wouldn't be too far off, getting thrown back in there. Getting to try her hand again at surviving or killing.
She could use the vacation. Besides, she wasn't up for admitting she might've been a little too fascinated with the center's elevator. What? Like she'd ever seen one of those working before. Not that she could remember. There was definitely a childish glee in watching the buttons light up, riding the box from one bumpy floor to another.]
What; Getting used to being around myriads of people and generally reacting to a normal life in general. What is normalcy???
Where: The training center, wandering around, WHEREVER U WANT HER.
When; Post-Arena
Warnings/Notes: idk cursing I guess
Julie was thinking how weird it was -- only in retrospect, of course -- that the first time she'd been back in a, moving city after, oh, ten years, she'd needed to take it in alone. It was overwhelming, all of it: people moving without watching their backs, dressed in flashy, overwrought clothes that they hadn't scavenged from shredded corpse two towns back. There were wigs and bright gleaming gems and restaurants that sold food without rot and maggots and, Christ, she could get anything she fucking wanted if only she could figure out what that was.
She still wasn't sure. All of that wishing for what not only she'd lost, but humanity itself -- maybe it was just something simple. Fireworks and making out with Perry under a full moon, veins warm with beer. Then they could go see some stupid action movie where things exploded but not into sparks of color, and there was always a sweeping soundtrack, music that wasn't guarded jealously because it was so hard to find.
Going out and taking it all in was too much. She'd heard about it: culture shock. Had to figure this was something like it. So after that fiasco (where her heart had pounded and she'd felt a little sick from the lights and the natural heat of too many humans in too small a space), she stayed inside. Quieter there. And training, no matter how fucked it seemed, was normal. Keep up the accuracy, always be on your toes. No rest. Don't stop looking behind you.
God, if she could thank dad for all his shitty new-world colloquialisms that stuck in her head.
She was getting more adventurous. Wow, small goddamn victories. Still, she kept thinking... it wouldn't be too far off, getting thrown back in there. Getting to try her hand again at surviving or killing.
She could use the vacation. Besides, she wasn't up for admitting she might've been a little too fascinated with the center's elevator. What? Like she'd ever seen one of those working before. Not that she could remember. There was definitely a childish glee in watching the buttons light up, riding the box from one bumpy floor to another.]
no subject
R peered at the dress, focusing first on Julie's pink face, then on the splashes of orange against black. Compared to some of the stuff they passed on the way in, it looked like it was in the wrong store: it actually looked like a dress at all. He tried to picture Julie wearing it. Swap out the red number she had on before – R could feel his shriveled brain clenching, like it didn’t want to flex its muscles – and yeah, there it was. His imagination stuttered until it came back with something. Julie in the butterfly dress.
R felt his heart trying to pretend it was anything but a dead lump in his chest. Was he impinging it fluttered?
“…It…looks pretty,” R decided to come clean if his personal opinion was going to be rattling out today. Maybe it wasn’t Julie’s usual style, but he liked it. In fact, he liked it a lot. “You would…work...it.”
Uh oh, here it came: R decided to try something new and daring even if he snapped off a few fingers in the attempt. The zombie’s gray hand wobbled up. He thought he remembered what this looked like – in fact, he was sure he must’ve seen it before on one of those trampled magazines, the ones he pawed through trying to read and ended up just staying for the pictures. Now he was going for broke, wanting to impress on Julie just how much he liked the dress she picked out even if no, it wasn’t her because she knew better than to wear something that would hold her down while zombies chewed off her legs. His fingers folded one by one, almost tortured, R ignoring the fact that a few of them were giving warning creaks.
Eventually he cranked it out:
Julie’s dress earned R’s very first thumbs up, shaky and barely holding it together. (It totally still counted).
“You should…get it, Ju…lie,” R groaned. “Really.”
no subject
It was worth it. First she gets pretty, which, look, she's not the desperate kind and that was good enough for her. Julie's also spent enough time around R to know he wasn't done yet. So she waits, quiet, watching it all happen in slow-time. The raise of his arm, the clenching of his fingers. And then that single thumb raising up with that goofy smile.
It definitely counted.
Despite herself she laughed, though it wasn't at him. It was a soft huff of disbelief, watching him as her teeth grazed her lip. Sometimes it was hard -- okay, outside of the dead glow of his eyes and the mottled grey of his skin and, hell, the muzzle -- to remember he wasn't actually alive. Sometimes he seemed so entirely human that she kind of forgot. Just for a second.
You are something else, she thought. What she said was, "If you're on board with it, I'm sold." There was a note of pleased confidence in her voice because, despite what she'd figured, R's opinion mattered. And she might've been looking to impress a little.
"What about you?" Her eyes were appraising as they swept over him. "I kinda miss the hoodie look. We gotta find you something."
no subject
The shy smile behind his muzzle grew a little wider, softening despite his rigor mortis muscles. With Julie here, sometimes he felt like he wasn’t rotting, like maybe he could go with a good tan and fresh clothes and that the muzzle was only there for looks.
“You…liked it?” R’s rattling voice was surprised, then pleased, because the clothes a zombie died in were one of the few solid clues about who they were. It was one of the few personal things left. He’d sometimes felt self-conscious about his: a ratty hoodie compared to M’s nice suit, holes that probably were there even before the apocalypse. Now Julie was saying she liked the “look” (he had a look?) and that made R miss his hoodie even more now. “I…agree. Find...more…like it?”
“You would look both adorable if you tried matching colors,” said the voice behind R’s shoulder. “Trust me.”
By now they’d attracted attention – they might not be the most popular Tributes out there, but a girl and her zombie was still a sale and this sales associate was a hardcore romantic who'd love a chance to make her mark on one of the Arena couples. She shipped it all: Katniss/Peeta, Julie/R, Howard/Eponine, Maximus/Wyatt – you name it, she gushed and giggled about it to all her friends. Now she eased her way around R’s shoulder, this little short girl about Julie’s age who had shaved half her head and replaced it with shimmering tattoo scales, today in District 12’s reds and blacks. Her nametag glittered with ABELIA across it. R hadn’t even heard Abelia pop up until now, the zombie giving a slow start in surprise.
no subject
"What?" Christ, she nearly lost her heart there. It wasn't just the zombie who was surprised, though Julie's reaction was a little faster -- a jump in her heart, a hand raised to her hair to nervously pull at it.
She didn't want to think about the fact that with R, sometimes, she kind of. Forgot the rest of the world. Or. Fuck. Julie's eyes jumped to the nametag, back up to the girl's head. What was with the fucked-up fashion around here? It was like... hell, she didn't know. Even what she remembered of, you know, normal life, no one dressed like the people here.
"Yeah, uh..." She glanced at the zombie, tucking the dress tighter around her arm. "There's no way I'm gonna do that. We're not even in the same district." Bad enough that they had people, like, thinking they were together or something. The hell was she supposed to do with that?
no subject
R was torn between finding it comforting someone out there isn’t too weirded out at that thing(?) between Julie and him and something else. Annoyance? R thinks he’s annoyed after all, because they were doing this together, just Julie and him, and now there’s someone else he needs to groan up words for. If you ask him, he’d rather save the few words he can groan out at a time for Julie. Glancing at Julie, his head lolling almost lazily, he could see her body language had changed: she had the dress stuck almost defensively under her arm, like she wanted to turtle up and stand her ground at the same time like she could do both. Pure Julie.
“Looking for…” R wracked his brain for what he wanted to say. “Hoodie.”
He can see the girl starting to come up with colors and accessory suggestions and sneaking another glance at Julie, he thought this could get more complicated than it has to. R hurried to think of something simple. He cheated, going off Julie’s colors: not the dress she picked out, but her.
“Yellow…or blue…?” R slid that in right there, thinking he was doing decently for being put on the spot here. He even remembered to be polite. “Puh…please.”
His eyes drifted from Abelia to Julie, checking to see what she thought of his new color choices.