I Don't Know If I Can Call This Home [Open]

[nunpunching]

WHO| Punchy and open
WHAT| Punchy gets his tongue back.
WHEN| Week Six
WHERE| District 6 Suites
WARNINGS| None yet.

He messes up his room first. Not out of spite, but because the bare walls, the laundered sheets, the rearranged furniture all feels like a reminder of having spent the last few months tongueless and too identity-less to have a space to call his own. He has to mark it, for lack of a better word, and that means upturning the desk into some sort of fortress against the closet, it means dragging the mattress off the bed frame onto the floor and turning the bed so that he can sleep while watching the door.

It wasn't something he ever worried about before.

He's not supposed to talk about it. He's under strict orders not to talk about the details. He knows he's been given a second chance, one that no other Avox has yet received, but he also knows that blessing don't always come in warm packages that are easy to accept. When an Avox opens his door to deliver some laundry, he can't bring himself to look at her, and he stares out the window at the skyline for an hour after she leaves.

He grabs a stereo out of the lounge and squirrels it back into his room. Giving exactly zero shits that it's a little past three in the morning, Punchy covers the sound of his sobbing with floor-rattling, wall-shaking bass from a Dr. Dre record.

Comments

[acroodawakening]

Guy nodded at Punchy's explanation for a moment as if he understood.

Then he stopped nodding and shook his head.

"I don't know what any of those words mean."

[nunpunching]

Punchy opens his mouth to explain and gush over his stereo some more, then closes it and decides that he'll probably have better luck with boiling it down to the most important part of his ramble. "It's fucking aces."

He pats it lovingly. "You fresh, right? This is new turf for you?"

[acroodawakening]

"I'm...fresh, yes," he said. That one at least made sense. "I woke up here during the last arena."

Which had been a little rough, though he was rallying emotionally, crying himself asleep notwithstanding. Grieving for what he'd been taken away from was healthy.

"I'm from someplace that's not like this world at all so I'm having trouble adjusting to so many new things at once."

[nunpunching]

"Shit, ain't nobody's home turf totally gelled with this one." Punchy starts to pace, uncomfortable just standing there. "When's the last time you blasted some Z's, homie?"

[acroodawakening]

"This is, ah, another one of those moments where it sounds like you're speaking in another language again."

Guy shook his head with tiny, slight movements.

"The way you talk, it's a very nice language. It's very..." He waved a hand vaguely. "Rhythmic? Kind of? But I'm going to need more time to learn how to speak it."

[nunpunching]

Punchy outright beams. His eyes sink into his cheeks like the sun over the ocean, lighting up his face.

"You sayin' I got flow, homey?" Even if he isn't, Punchy will take it. He's been a long time lonely in his dialect, unable to convince many others to participate.

[acroodawakening]

"Yes," Guy said. Then he added, "Probably."

Because he wasn't sure what that was but if he was asking whether or not he found the way he spoke to have its own weird poetry, then yes, he did.

"At least I think I am."

He smiled right back, rocking slightly where he sat, glad to have struck that kind of note with Punchy. He looked like he needed as much of a reason to smile as Guy needed them.

[nunpunching]

Punchy outright preens. His smile morphs into a self-confident smirk and he runs his hand through his gelled hair, leaving it spiked up in the front.

"I ain't even been able to spit last go-round, and I still got the heavy flavor on my tongue. Hells yeah. Ain't shit Capitol can do to touch me."

He's saying it for himself as much as Guy.

[acroodawakening]

"You weren't able to spit?" He vaguely remembered Joan talking about a friend that'd had their tongue cut out because of something they'd done in defiance of the Capitol.

[nunpunching]

"I could drool," Punchy says, expression becoming stormy. "Ain't supposed to spill much about it, though."

And more than that, he doesn't especially want to. He flops back onto the bed.

[acroodawakening]

Guy just sat and looked up at him for a moment. He wasn't sure how to react to that. This world and everything in it was so complicated and terrible it was outside his already limited frame of reference when it came to social behavior.

Guy knew better than to ask more about it, though, so he did the only thing he could think of and stood up, crawled up on the bed next to Punchy, sitting cross-legged and reaching out a hand to gently pat him a few times on the shoulder before withdrawing it.

Just a friendly, comforting pat pat pat and then sitting expectantly.

"I know I'm a stranger but if you want to talk about it to someone, I'd be willing to listen." He rocked slightly where he sat. "Or if you want, I can think of something else to talk about, like your church."

[nunpunching]

Punchy can't help but feel his guts fill with shame that he's in this position, being comforted, when he's supposed to be the one doing that. Or at least the one laughing it off and telling someone to grow a pair already.

"I ain't need to be softing you, dawg." He pouts at the ceiling, eyebrows knitted up. "You wanna talk beats church or church church?"

[acroodawakening]

"It wouldn't be softing me. That's - being that way for people is how we are where I come from."

He was rapidly learning it wasn't for many of the other people here.

"Ties with people. Family. Tribe." But apparently what Punchy needed was a subject change, so... "But let's talk about beats church. I think - I think that's the one that I'll like the most."

[nunpunching]

Punchy understands tribe, understands bonds with people. He just doesn't want to be reminded of it right now.

"Beats church!" Punchy raises his hands up and claps them. "Dawg, you ever heard wicked flow so intense you was like, ascended? Music's the pass up the bleed, you know, universal lingo and all that."

[acroodawakening]

"Yes! I know music. My dad, he invented a type of music. He calls it rock music, because you make it by hitting rocks together or hitting things on rocks. But you do it like - here."

He moved over, perched on Punchy's chair, and started tapping his hands against his desk, drumming rhythmically with his hands, nodding his head to the beat as he did it.

[nunpunching]

"Rock music's got a different profile in my time, but you know, the brothers started that shit up. It's solid, based in blues and shizz." Punchy's grin threatens to overwhelm his whole face. "Those beats is tight, yo! Polyrhythmic and shit."

[acroodawakening]

"I don't know what any of those are or which brothers made it but where I'm from it's my dad and it sounds kinda like this," said Guy, still knocking away with his hands. "We like to make music. Aside from it just being fun to listen and dance to, it scares a lot of the wild animals away."

Useful and entertaining!

"Not that they need that much scaring, since we have our animals that live with us. They're pretty big and scary to other animals, even if they're sweeties to us."

[nunpunching]

"Well, we don't got to be scaring shit nowadays. Even when we bring the reckoning we don't be casing no animals or shit." Punchy reaches over and turns some of the music back on - not as loud as before, some complicated beat to try and match Guy's tastes, so to speak.

"You feeling any more buffed, homes?"

[acroodawakening]

That one was easy to figure out.

"Yeah," Guy said with a little smile. "It helps knowing people here are trying to be kind."

Taking someone in and trying to help them calm down was kind.

"I've still gotta sleep sometime, though."

[nunpunching]

"We all got kindness inside. This joint just tries to lay it low and space it." Punchy shrugs. "I should probably check it too, get some Z's."

[acroodawakening]

Guy stood up.

"How do you say goodbye in your language?"

Yes, he was convinced it was a language. One that apparently didn't translate that well.

All the more reason he should try to learn to speak it. Guy figured it was probably making Punchy that much more homesick to not quite hear things in his native tongue.

[nunpunching]

Punchy hops up and opens the door, patting Guy on the back (damn, that guy's short in comparison). He yawns and covers his mouth before slouching back in his desk chair.

He makes a hand-gesture that could be interpreted as rude if not for his very genuine smile and answer.

"We say 'peace'."

[acroodawakening]

"I like that."

He matched the hand gesture - and the smile.

"Then, peace."

Then with one last smile, he walked out and headed back to his room, feeling like he'd have a much easier time falling asleep this time than he did the first time he'd tried.