(open) Attention, all personnel. New survival manuals have arrived.

[swill]

Who| Hawkeye and anyone!
What| He has his first adventure in the Capitol; don't worry, it's a tame one.
Where| Out in the city, then in the common room.
When| Week 6
Warnings/Notes| None yet!

Dying was new. Dying as in losing his life. Dying as in being lost in terror and losing all or most sense of being a person, he'd done before. Despite it all- the miracles of medicine he had no doubt experienced moments prior to being escorted to his room, before he lay in the luxurious bed for hours and stood under the warm spray of water in the shower for hours more- Hawkeye felt like he'd just done all of this before. He felt he should be more thrilled. He wasn't. He wondered if maybe that meant something was wrong with him, that he hadn't hollered and hooted at taking a breath of air again, at seeing his hand whole, at being able to move without pain. After a night back in the company of the living -because he sure as hell wasn't dead and this sure wasn't Hell or Heaven- Hawkeye had convinced himself he was as sane as he should be and as content as was acceptable to be.

[Out and About]
Silent pep talk done with, he silently slipped out of his quarters -it was weird, thinking that entire room was for him alone- and with a skip to his step, he dared venture down to the common room, the lobby, that place where he inferred all the poor bastards and disheartened saps had to congregate or at least pass through to get away. A first step. And he wasn't sure why he hadn't noticed the color before -chalked it up to his being in shock- but it's what strikes him first after the relief of getting an elevator ride done with. Color! Again, he was supposed to hoot and shriek. He had whined about the dullness of olive and green and beige all around him for the past three years. He had dreamed about color, about bright reds and oranges, and pinks and blues. But suddenly it was too much, too bright, too soon. He stepped through the room without much celebration. One woman with a too-pale face and make-up that'd make the crudest call girl cringe waved at him and he waved back. Hello, stranger. Hello, strange world. There were televisions around- or projections- or whatever. They forced him to look ahead, to his goal and nothing else: out. Lovely room, lovely showers, lovely beds and sofas and what a lovely lounge. But he had to get out.

And when he finally did step out, he wasn't sure if he should keep walking. Hawkeye looked this way and that, found a road that seemed straight enough, and marched on. The Capitol had to end somewhere, by God, or maybe that was the liquor talking. His suite had been stocked.

[Central Commons]
But it didn't end. And eventually he found himself sprawled over one of the couches, screwing with the communicator, drawing back every time he'd manage to make it do anything and shutting it down. He decidedly kept his eyes off the projections of the Games still on-going. He bemoaned the fact that he didn't have a ball and paddle or yo-yo. When a man with bluish skin and green hair strolled on by, Hawkeye whistled shrilly to get his attention, asked how life as a stick of broccoli was going for him, and fought back the urge to deck him for the hell of it. But it'd look silly to exert so much effort into something that would be so fruitless when Hawkeye was upside down in the seat now, head danging where his legs should and legs bent comfortably over the back of the chair. It at least earned him a look here and there and Hawkeye took it as more evidence that he was, in fact, alive again.

So he had said he was through freaking out about that earlier. So he'd lied. Sue him. Do it.

Someone to his right, another freak, another stupid person in this new and stupid world, talks about a lost bet. Hawkeye growls, pretends he's a dog. Gets the person to at least step away. His eyes catch, after much struggle to keep them averted, a replay on one of those fantastic screens. The jungle's shown, a pair of strangers fight. Someone here, away from the jungle, talks about betting again. He swears he would have punched the bastard if he had gotten right-side up quick enough to find the face he was looking for. Hawkeye feels a shudder travel through him, and knows his finger isn't steady as he points at the screen ahead and hollers, red in the face, in a higher pitch than he'd cared for, "Somebody shut that damned thing off!"

What the heck was the matter with these people?

"Or tune it to a different channel! It's been the same thing playing all damn day."

Didn't they get bored? He did. He got bored easily.

Comments

Commons - Have a pint-size blonde Radar

[clarityinchaos]

Armin had been busy with a few different things. In the course of Hawkeye's testing of the boundaries around him, he'd settled in to the couch opposite the medic, and spread some papers out over the coffee table. He seemed to be drawing out some kind of schematic, consisting of wires and reels and valves. He wore his leather harness again. It was comforting, in a way. He'd reached a compromise with his stylist: he could wear the harness if he let her have her way with his bowl cut. The rest of his clothing was simple, blue trousers tucked into his boots, and a crimson button-up shirt.

He tolerated quite a bit of this guy's hijinks, only glancing up from his work occasionally. But when he demanded that the feed of the Games be shut off, he decided to stop holding his tongue. "It's mandatory that the feed from the games be played everywhere," he started, barely looking up from his work. "And I still have a friend in there."

get ready to be chewed out /o/

[swill]

Armin hadn't even been a blip on his radar, honestly. Stupid hair, fresh looking boy, tacky... accessory -that's what Hawkeye thought of the harness after refusing to spare it a second glance despite the rest of the clothing was too plain-, he almost fit right in with the crowd of natives. At least that's what Hawkeye will tell himself after having totally ignored the boy for so long. But that will come way after this, way after when Hawkeye nearly gapes at the words, the supposed explanation, rattled off in his direction so fact-of-the-matter like. Mandatory? Well, who the heck gave the order because Hawkeye sure hadn't heard. And since when did an order mean that there wasn't any other option to take? He's still pointing his finger and his hand's still shaking. And this still doesn't add up, not to him.

"You don't seem very concerned," he spat out. And he'd feel bad about it later, maybe. Stupid boy, stupid place. There were murmurs from the men and women dressed in vicious colors.

He opened his mouth to bite again but couldn't find the words to- or even the thought. The ideas in his head were flashing, not quite staying still long enough for him to make out what they were. His stomach burned and it wasn't because he still hadn't had a meal since his generous revival despite having downed a bottle or two or three. Friends? Here? No. He had the girl. The girl hadn't come with him. He wanted to bite but couldn't know how. He grasps for words and just shouts out, "Why would you want to see that?" Because it made perfect sense to him. To him, it wasn't nonsense. To him, it had context. Stupid kid and his plain-- oh. Must be a Tribute. Just fanning a fire. "What is wrong with you?" Stupid kid.

he ain't skerred.... well maybe a little

[clarityinchaos]

Once, Armin might have been cowed by this grown man's rebuke of his comments. But that was before a lot of what he'd seen. And before his first Arena. He put the pencil down and rubbed at his face and eyes before looking back up to Hawkeye would know that look. It was a similar look in the eyes of the kids he'd see in his recovery room. "He helped me to survive in there, at least as long as I had," he explained. "I should watch so I can send him whatever he needs. To return the favor."

He responded just as nonchalantly as he had started. He searched through some of his other papers a bit, pulled one out and seemed to refer to it as he continued with his drawings.

[swill]

When the pencil gets let down, Hawkeye expects a confrontation- a bigger one. He stands straighter and squares his jaw and even feels a little ridiculous at the reaction. The grim frown's still in place and he's resolved not to let it slip until the boy looks up at him again. Then he shifts his weight to one leg and still can't hold back the breath, the sigh, the huff, all just hot breath that would've burned the back of his throat if it hadn't been for the exhale. He tightened his jaw more, because the kid was too calm. Because the look in his eyes wouldn't let him speak up.

He looks up- at nothing. At the ceiling. Because he feels like he's wearing a muzzle.

When he glances back at the boy, he's returned to his drawing and Hawkeye feels like he has to try and see what the hell it is that's so important. He steps forward. He shrugs and rolls his shoulders like, oh, if the boy can be so casual about this than so can he. Just look at the nonchalance he can radiate too. "I think they'd be happy to get some food. Water. Medicine. But don't listen to me, I haven't watched. It's just a hunch."

Twerp.

[clarityinchaos]

He positioned a drafting square carefully, and made some more exact lines than the sketches he had been before. He took a couple measurements and did a quick bit of math to one side before he put the pencil down again. "I can see how making some allies might help, but watching your friends die in battle once is bad enough. Over and over again would be..." but he ran out of words to really communicate what he meant. But that probably said enough.

He stared off a moment, before taking up his work. "But this was my first Arena. You might have more experience with that."

[swill]

There ya go, he tells himself without words. Now you've done it. And he's not sure what he's done or accomplished, but he sighs, loud and heavy and almost even pained. It sounded like nagging, though. Like a wordless 'buck up'. It sounded like he was fed up with this, and he was, but 'this' wasn't the boy's fault. And Hawkeye wasn't happy with... well, with anything. He wasn't happy he didn't know anything, he wasn't happy with having death be such a casual thing though he should be used to it, he wasn't happy with how he kept trying to hold on to these ideals. Ideally, death wouldn't be sport. Ideally, it wouldn't be broadcast as entertainment. Ideally, people would feel more, like he did.

To hell with ideals--

he'd just made the boy feel as crummy as he'd wanted the Broccoli Man to feel, if the guarded speech and precise lines on paper told the doctor anything.

Hrrm. It wasn't his fault, he wanted to say. He huffs again- and it's a huff this time, just an exhale, not a silly and dramatic-styled sigh. "It was my first Arena too, bub." He says, tired. He scrubs a hand down his face. He wonders why he's trying to make himself feel... bad. He was working to make himself feel rotten. There was effort in this. There shouldn't be. He'd heard the word 'battle'. He was just tired. "Is that what you're working on?" Plans to keep the recycling to a minimum? And wasn't it funny? How he'd used to wish there was a way for wars to just recycle their boys, instead of having to bring in new bodies for every time a general got a whim?

[clarityinchaos]

He shook his head. "I'm just keeping busy," he replied, crumpling up a page and pulling out a fresh sheet. He didn't want people to pay attention to what he was doing, really.

He glanced toward the screen idly, as though it had merely distracted him. But then he looked back to Hawkeye as he slouched back on the couch. "But that's a shame. I was hoping someone could tell me what to expect from here." He was still fairly exhausted from everything that had gone on lately, so he was perhaps being a bit more open than he normally would have intended.

[mannersmatter]

There was a high, forced type of laugh.

"Don't mind him, he's one of the newer tributes."

Effie knew how to deal with this situation. Hell, this situation was practically a welcomed, familiar relief, even if it did make Effie's heart ache.

"There's only one channel." She said, turning her attention to Hawkeye, her voice softening.

[swill]

'Don't mind him' is something that's said to rats that mate under the cots, to mutts that chase each other through the mess tent, to men with half their chest blown to bits who were bloated purple and only serving the purpose of making the buses reek. Of everything he could have heard, he wasn't sure he expected to be so expertly dismissed. Her laugh had pierced him- he knew that kind of laughter and made a business and an art of tailoring it. All he registered was that he was being dissed by a woman from the circus.

Hawkeye lowered the finger. He even forced a very long suffering sort of sigh. And just like Effie had approached, Hawkeye figured, pretending to be gentle and good willing, he also calmed down. He also bit back the lash and softened his own expression.

"That's why I said 'or'," he said. He was quiet and still for a beat. He cocked his head sweetly.

He bent over and began to untie his shoelaces in a frenzy.

[mannersmatter]

"They don't ever turn off. They..."

She felt like she was about to touch on something that was too...too something. Too big, too hard, too dark. And so she pulled back a bit, but still, the dark look was on her face, the sympathy.

"They want to keep everyone...aware of what's going on."

All the time. What could that be like? She pushed that thought away, as well. Just as she always had with Haymitch. But Haymitch, at least, got to go home. Once upon a time she wouldn't have considered that a benefit.

"I know it's stressful." She added.

[swill]

"They're failing."

Awareness wasn't celebration. And thank God if she believed in him and damn Him if she didn't that Hawkeye got his finger somehow caught in the laces, that he hopped once and twice on one foot as he tried to get it free and kick off what he had planned to throw at the movies instead. Two seconds of absurdity and the steam falling, Hawkeye let go his scheme and planted both feet on the ground and, hey, that could almost pass for figurative language. Almost. He does this gesture like he's dusting off his hands, like he's straightening the front of his shirt, like he's trying to overcompensate and be proper after his folly. Gee, he hadn't even been trying that time.

And no-- aware. No, he didn't believe it. He starts mumbling, messing with his hair now, going to extra twenty miles in his you didn't see that, nothing happened, act nonchalant routine. Her good cop act was killing him. "You don't know what stress is," he insisted. There's no venom in his words but they might sound less cold if there was. Finally he drops his hands to his sides, heavy. Gee, how embarrassing. "Couldn't find what to wear this morning? Cat ate the lipstick? Yeah, that's stressful. No, seriously. We had one guy in the comp-- do you know people are aware of the war, but they don't--"

Celebrate? Yes, they did. He had. Bet? Yes. Dance? Hoot? Laugh? Televise?

Christ, he's lost. If he looks it, for a second, he doesn't care and he thinks he might be too hungry to. And he hates her damn kicked puppy eyes. "None of this is new, ya know. I'm not stressed. What's wrong with you?"

[mannersmatter]

Effie found herself watching him, listening to him in a way she hadn't in awhile. He reminded her, in a way, of Haymitch. A less broken Haymitch, though...from the looks of it, not by much. What had been going on in his home world? The question was almost at the tip of her tongue, in a small talk sort of way, when she stopped herself.

He didn't really seem to want small talk.

The last question caught her off guard, and she blinked at him for a moment, before scoffing softly and tossing her head. The curls piled atop of it, of course, didn't budge.

"Whatever do you mean?"

[swill]

He looks at her. Just stands there and looks at her and doesn't hide and lingering gaze and doesn't feel any shame for the frown that he sports. Looks at her legs and adornments and her waist and her face and he can convince himself he's talking to a Christmas tree, if he were any drowsier or on any medication. Not human, the little annoying voice in the back of his head called. But it'd been wrong before. And a blind make-up artist did not a monster make, although consulting with the crying children may be a wise choice to call that one. No, no. Hawkeye didn't know what to make of Effie Trinket.

He made a sweeping gesture at the space between them, like he was some theatre clown. "This," he insists, voice flat and demanding and irritated and curious. So damn curious. There's an urgency to it, like his mind would lose itself if he wasn't satisfied in the next second. "Why are you talking to me? Why are you still here?" And he figures the second question's the better one, if only because it's less hostile. Not that he meant to be. Honest. "I'm just a tribute. I barked at someone. I'd have bitten- I almost threw a shoe at you. That is, if I had missed the television, you'd have been the next target. I know I'm charming, doll, but I'm also a hell of a handful. There's a list I have on me that'll vouch for that."

Commons

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

[OOC: we're still backthreading some Arena stuff with Howard, so I'm going to be a bit vague on the details.]

Howard knows the look of someone fresh out of the Arena. He's been in five, now. He's seen it plenty of times. He can tell in the way people's gazes keep going blank, slipping back into replaying the events of a few days ago, wrestling with the now-undone concepts of mortality. He's seen it in the mirror, the sudden hollowness.

He almost approaches Hawkeye, but he sees the way he growls, the barely-contained anger. Howard's not a violent person; he retreats when he's scared, rather than lashing out with fists. And so he's sitting in the corner of the common room, in a corner on the floor, wearing a hoodie two sizes too big.

He's back to being starved-skinny again, a mere seventy-two pounds as of the scale this morning. The fabric of his sweater drapes into valleys between his collar bone and his shoulders, hangs far past his bony fingers. He keeps the hood up, and it falls over his brow, blocking the top half of his vision. He shivers a little, cold despite the decent room temperature.

When Hawkeye starts yelling, he cringes back against the wall as if he expects blows to follow. But they don't, and so he begins to calculate, figuring out how best to make a good impression from the start. How to amass allies when his tendency is to rub people the wrong way, especially the more they get to know him.

He gets up and turns the TV to a different channel - a music video station on mute - and goes and takes a seat behind the couch Hawkeye's sitting on, away from the screen.

[swill]

[ooc: sounds good!]

He doesn't even make out the figure at first. He thinks it's just a shadow. Even after the channel switched, Hawkeye couldn't quite place it. What he meant was- so yeah, he understood everything. It was a starved Negro boy. He knew Negroes, knew starvation, knew that you could switch the channels on a television if you knew how. But together, in this place, it didn't make a lick of sense and he couldn't connect the dots for that number of seconds. Because mostly everyone around was well-fed. Groomed. Healthy in the physical sense. Ignoring him.

And then there was this boy, who was the opposite. It was like one rapid shock following the big one.

"Hey!" He calls, not really wondering why he decided to yell if the boy was so close or why his voice was suddenly scratchy. He scrambles over to the seat Howard had gone to, a hand latching on the back of the chair and another to the arm of it. Hands! They worked! Wasn't that great? And it was so difficult to keep confused thoughts straight.

"Thanks," Hawkeye said, and feels out of breath and doesn't know why if he hasn't run far or anything. And he feels his gut twist at the sight of the guy, but there was food in abundance and surely the kid knew and no gain would come from pointing that out but it was no use. He's worried sick, or maybe just sick. He ducks his head and tries to find eyes under the hood and asks, "You okay?" And he doesn't even care about the fucking entertainment anymore. Or maybe he did, what did he know. He wasn't paying any more attention to it.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

It's only after he's startled so hard he's smacked his elbow against the back of the chair that Howard's reminded of Saturday morning cartoons, where Wile E. Coyote would get scared by a gunshot behind him and his skeleton would jump out of his skin. As that image plays in his head (again and again and again), he tries to breathe deep and hear past the pounding of blood in his ears.

You're a little high-strung, his common sense jeers at him. Maybe you should lay off the coffee. And the near-death experiences. And the actual-death experiences.

"You don't need to shout, I'm right here," he says, trying to keep the snap out of his voice. Keeping his shoulders hunched, he shakes from the neck up and the hood falls back on his forehead a little bit, revealing intelligent dark eyes that meet Hawkeye's. Too-white Capitol-buffed teeth looking out of place as they peek from under a chapped lip. "And yeah, I'm peachy."

He knows full well he doesn't look it, but he also doesn't know Hawkeye well enough to tell if Hawkeye's seeing a sympathetic victim or vulnerable prey right now, so there's no need to broadcast that he's still shaken from the last Arena. He's fairly sure his Looney Tunes response to loud noises already sent that message loud and clear,

"First time?"

[swill]

If anything, he learned it would be a good idea, in the future, to not slap a hand on the guy's shoulder without sounding a warning. And that warning would have to lower than this, of course. Hawkeye felt himself shrink and wince at the start. He hadn't meant it to happen.

But if the boy can carry on, so can he. So he lets the guilt wash right off as much as it would, and he offers a small smile to counter the bite he had deserved to receive. It was difficult, facing a boy who was smaller than his body said he should be, but it was nothing out of the ordinary and maybe Hawkeye found himself grateful for that. "Nice to meetcha, Peachy," he chirps and lets his hands down from the chair. He saunters to be in front of the boy, not off to one side like a creep. "I'm Hawkeye." In olive drab and a faint whiff of alcohol on his breath and he's not sure he's introduced himself so true, before. He slaps on a pensive sort of expression, clicks his tongue before letting slip, "No, no, I've already had it. What a gal." And then he sobers, somewhat, and the pensive sort of expression is still on him but it's so much sincere.

He couldn't see the harm in it.

"Yeah, first time." He said, and slipped a hand in a pocket and rocked back on his heels. "And last."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard cracks a grin a bit, pleased by the tidbit of wordplay, although his eyes lose focus a bit as he tries to track where Hawkeye's train of thought is going. It strikes him that something about the way Hawkeye talks seems out of time, out of place, something about the word 'gal' that doesn't match up to the way men in Howard's time speak.

"You sure about that?"

He stands up so he's only being looked down on a little less. Hawkeye's significantly taller than him, but that's fairly par for the course for Howard; the heels of his shoes pin down an extra two inches of hem on his pants. Some people are just not blessed with height. He tilts his head as he looks Hawkeye up and down, at the way he holds himself and the amount of meat on his bones.

"Are you petitioning out or something?"

[swill]

Atta boy.

Hawkeye feels a strange and stupid pride in seeing the boy get to his feet. He even steps back himself, as if allowing room would make the boy's posture grander, more important to him. Him being Hawkeye. He's sure the boy thought nothing of it. Even if the figure of the skeleton was more pronounced under the skin and clothing with the stand, there was energy. And he'd never stop marveling at human beings. The real kind. And Howard's little grin is met again by Hawkeye's own, more lopsided and decisively haphazard.

There were two things he was sure of here: he might be sane, and he maybe died.

They were terrifying thoughts.

And Hawkeye just barely keeps from spitting out the laugh he held in. "No, no," he said, waving a hand- his left- in small circles. He catches sight, finally, of the projection behind Howard which he had hollered at before. He's proud that he sounds as snotty as the caricature he intended to portray. "They wouldn't give me the pay I had asked for. They're penny pinchers. Stingy old rats. Finks." He really should think about it, and hard and serious.

"I'm just-" and he shrugs here, like he's talking about getting the barn cat fixed, "not going to go when they call for Round 2."

Out in the big big world. Also I'm late to this.

[doc_holi]

Holiday didn't care about getting out of the Tribute Tower a lot during the day. It made everything feel far far too real. These people walked around in gaudy outfits that only ever saw the light on a millionaire's runway in ridiculous makeup that didn't even make them seem human anymore among the shimmering white jungle of towers that Jules Verne couldn't have even come up with. Everything so sleek, smooth, perfect, colorful, and barbaric right under the sun. The same sun that was back home. The one she would see after climbing to the roof of Providence in the early morning so that Six wouldn't realize that she had been up all night.

She couldn't stand it. She preferred the night when everything was dark and neon and looked like a dream. Plus, by that time, she was usually well and truly drunk.

Today, after that fiasco with the supposed rebellion, she had to get out. Holiday couldn't stand seeing all of those somewhat familiar faces in such a crowded space. Her room felt more like a cage than usual. Even decking Jack wouldn't make her feel any better. Or Calico. So, she decided to get some coffee for the first time in a very long time.

That's when she noticed a familiar stranger taking a brisk walk down the sidewalk her table was parked beside. Her lips barely twitched into a smile. "Enjoying the weather?" She hadn't seen his death, but she wasn't really surprised. Victors and deaths and all of that wasn't really surprising anymore.

Never late!

[swill]

It would be impossible not to admire -and all the same, question if 'admire' was the right word- the city. However, Hawkeye figured he was doing a formidable job at attempting to. Every passage in every book he's read that describe the shining cities comes to mind, and once or twice he even stops. Just dead in his tracks. Just stops to look back over his shoulder at how much and how little he had put behind of the glorious structures, or to look and try and keep his jaw from dropping to the floor at the 'fashion', he supposed was the word. The fashion of the Capitol. The poise, the posh prances, the perfectly problematic contradictions he found. They'd make him shift his course ever so slightly.

His legs were tired, he realized. No wonder he didn't last in the wild, he realized. He hadn't even looked for the girl, he realized. But she was still playing so delusions would only be balm for himself, and he was too tired to apply it.

Hawkeye didn't even see her. Too much color around- he'd gone blind, he thinks when he heard a voice he couldn't quite place but that he was certain he knew. When he turned and finally spotted her, sitting and sipping at a cup and smiling and casting a line for small talk, he thought about turning right the other way and continuing to walk. The-- the shock. Here was another one. His lips even part before he realizes it and has to work his mouth into a thin line. He steps forward. "It's stuffy, Linda. We should really open the windows, get a draft going."

Get it? Got it? No?

He finds himself chewing on his tongue, once. He finds himself looking the woman over from where he stood so near her table. He finds the pitch of his voice a touch tighter than he intended. This was Rebecca, wasn't it? The one he'd met? And Hawkeye takes it on himself to lean forward, hands on the table's edge, to see if he can catch her eyes. His were clouded. His were betrayed. Did she care? He didn't care. "You know, I never got to tell you what great legs you have." He says, because anything was better than the weather. It didn't even feel like spring. "Or how you seem to have a knack for utterly baffling me. Should I chalk this up to love at first sight? Second? People here might like the term 'crush' better."

[doc_holi]

Holiday wouldn't have minded if he kept walking. In fact, she would have understood, but she thought it pleasant of him to stop. He seemed to be handling the aftermath as well as everyone else did. She didn't go out like him on her first death. He had time to see people, form alliances, figure out the game. Holiday was killed by the first man she ran into. Sad, really. The disappointing kind, not the tragic sort.

Linda's new, but Holiday only gives a tiny smile over the comment and watches him rather closely, looking him in the eyes that were so clearly trying to catch yours. "If it weren't for the tone of your voice, I'd say you were hitting on me, Hawkeye."

She watches him for another brief moment, wondering if he's going to be sincere or dangerous and finds that she doesn't really care either way. "Would you like some coffee? It's on me."

[swill]

And to reciprocate the niceties, he grunts at her first comment. It's low, it's gruff, it's just drawn-out enough to maybe make some heads turn if anyone was within earshot. He takes her invitation this time. He seats himself and pushes the chair he landed heavily in away from the table, rocks it back, and plants his feet next to where Holiday's cup would be and he didn't care if she cared for the sight of old army boots. He sat there for a second, and as she watched him he watched her too. He was trying to coax out an answer. He wondered why she hadn't given him one yet. He wondered if he'd even asked the question. So he was acting and showing himself a lot like some adolescent boy in defiance of some house rule he had known all his life but only just now decided it was unfair and that he wouldn't stand for it.

He was throwing a fit a lot like he would in the compound.

He was wound up and angry and then mad at Holiday for being so damn calm. She was baiting him on, he figured childishly and knew he was wrong.

He crossed his feet and leaned back farther in the chair.

"No, not coffee. I need something to wake me up." And with that, he raises his right arm over his head and snaps his fingers- and snaps and snaps and he calls Oh, garçon! until someone -anyone, he didn't pay any attention to who- walked near. "I'll take a beer," he ordered, eyes closing as he said it. They focused back on Holiday in a second. "You know, this is the second time I'm in dutch with you." And he can't believe he said that angry, but he did. He'd talk- he'd open his mouth again and talk and talk until something good came out- but it wouldn't happen, so he doesn't. He just sits and waits and hopes the chair's legs don't break or that he doesn't lean too far back and fall.

[doc_holi]

Holiday let out a slow, deep breath, as she leaned back in her chair as well. She didn't mind his feet being on the table or his attitude or anything of that sort. He was still reeling from the arena - from this place - and the truly bad part was that Holiday didn't know what to do for that. She usually just helped get someone drunk or allowed a listening ear. This time was a little different.

"They have stronger things," she suggests, watching the waiter go back into the shop. Of course they had beer at a coffee shop. They had steaks and five course meals and sushi and coffee at every little street corner. The ways of the Capitol and its spoiled citizens, after all.

She sips at her drink and her eyes roam back to his again. Gently, Holiday puts her coffee back on to the table beside his feet and leans back again to watch him. "You're not in trouble with me, Hawkeye, or is that not what you meant? You handled things there as well as any good person would and you're handling things here as well as anyone has."

[swill]

He didn't pay the waiter any mind. He hadn't even known there had been one until Holiday spoke up and he commented through a snort, "Don't tempt me to run up your tab." And he knew what a boor he was being and couldn't bring himself to care. And he remembered a time before the war when he'd flirt differently- and he stops the line of thought there because this sure wasn't flirting. This sure wasn't his kind of flirting. --or it was, but the mood was all wrong. Everything was all wrong. Nothing was what it seemed, any doctor knew that. This wasn't-- and Hawkeye didn't even know what he was thinking of.

He hears Holiday speak again and it seemed to him like it was muted. Like when the radio was tuned to the crackpot news and the announcer had said with a laugh his name, and his attention had snapped to at the mess tent because all of a sudden he heard his name broadcast to God knows how many people, labeled as a war criminal. And it was a cheap shot and all lies and his blood had boiled but he'd done nothing about it at all. It felt like that, but it was longer.

And the service was quick because the Capitol loved its tributes and there was a cold beer placed on his side of the table. Or at least, once he slid his boots off the table and sat up like a decent alcoholic and gave the bottled beverage a sniff, it smelled enough like beer. What he wouldn't give for a martini, lighter fluid, and silence. "I'm not saying I'm in trouble with you," he parrots, again a sultry schoolboy. "At least I'd hope I wasn't. I haven't done a thing to you. I should be thanking you, actually, because you didn't only save my life, you saved the girl's. We were nearly starving. I freaked out then and I'm freaking out now. What I'm trying to say, Rebecca, is that I seem to lose all control when I'm around you. Some how." Of his mouth, for example. That runs away from him too and no, Hawkeye tells himself, it isn't love. "I'm not used to it so I'm acting up. Then again, I act up for any number of reasons. This just happens to be at the top of the list."